Censoring Mexican American Studies In Texas Schools is Not Only Ethnic Cleansing But Also Censorship and Muffling of The First And Fourteenth Amendments Phillip D. Ortego y Gasca

This is an April 17th piece by Don Felipe Ortego y Gasca that addresses the censoring of Mexican Americans Studies in schools, aptly referring it to as "ethnic cleansing."  Key quote:

What conclusion can be drawn from the xenophobic ethnic cleansing spreading across Arizona and Texas? The conclusion is that xenophobic whites in those states are out to get rid of “Mexicans”—whether they’re citizens or not? That may sound like a harsh judgment, but “Mexicans” are left with little room to maneuver in this ethnic cleansing. White Arizonans and Texans see the world through the prism of whiteness, a prism that wants to white-out all traces of their historically Mexican past and present.

Folks on the right and center have often viewed those of us on the left as exaggerating matters.  I would say that if anything, many of downplay the pain.  After all, it's not easy to go to the wound unless you have to. Plus, we risk people not believing us.  Or at worst, we get dismissed as whining.

I'm hoping that the current events of late involving family separations at the border, the move to de-naturalize citizens, the curtailing of Muslim's entry into the U.S., the upholding by the Supreme Court of state gerrymandering and the like, are making folks realize that they not only need to broaden their conceptual lenses to grasp our claim to institutionalized discrimination and oppression, but also to see how this has marked our history and experiences as members of minoritized communities in the U.S.

Racism and white nationalism are not a U.S. problem, but are, in fact, global ones.  Minoritized communities everywhere are targets of administrations that want to eviscerate their cultures and identities—if not to expunge them altogether.

Thanks to Dr. Roberto Calderón for sharing.

-Angela Valenzuela

Historia Chicana

17 April 2018

&

From: Philip.Ortego@wnmu.edu [mailto:Philip.Ortego@wnmu.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2018 11:12 AM
To: Calderon, Roberto <Roberto.Calderon@unt.edu>
Subject: Mexican American Study Course

Dr. Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, Ph.D. (Renaissance Studies/Chicano Studies)

Scholar in Residence (Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, Public Policy)

Recipient: 2018 NACCS-Tejas Foco Estrella de Aztlan Lifetime Achievement Award

Recipient: 1997 Distinguished Faculty Award, Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English, American and Mexican American

Texas State University System—Sul Ross

Alum: University of Pittsburgh, University of Texas, University of New Mexico

Western New Mexico University, Miller Library, 1000 College Ave, PO Box 680

Silver City, New Mexico 88062, Branches: Gallup, Deming, Lordsburg & Web

v   Veteran: Sgt. Marine Corps, WW II / Maj. (Res) USAF, Korean Conflict, Early Vietnam Era

v v v v v

CENSORING MEXICAN AMERICAN STUDIES IN TEXAS SCHOOLS IS NOT ONLY ETHNIC CLEANSING BUT ALSO CENSORSHIP AND MUFFLING OF THE FIRST AND FOURTEENTH AMENDMENTS

By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

T

here’s a nativist streak in the American psyche that emerges periodically to unravel the constitutional gains of American society, moving the nation more to the right—in a sort of dance macabre of the American national zeitgeist; in other words: something akin to an American Nazi Party (with the word “Nazi” being short for “National”). What has kept this Nazi zeitgeist at bay has been the vigilance of Americans working to create “a more perfect union,” committed to the preservation and process of democracy as articulated in the American Constitution.  What is little cogitated is that democracy is a process not a product.

That process has long held at bay inclusion of the real story of the American people, including those of color, starting with the story of Native Americans, then African Americans, and Mexican Americans. Other non-color groups have been given short shrift in the American Story as well. The real story of who we are as a nation has yet to be told, perhaps because it’s still an unfolding story. There’s little doubt that the American story today is not the same story as told by the French American writer J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur in his 3^rd Letter fro an American Farmer first published in 1782: he wrote, “they are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed, that race now called Americans have arisen.” He did not include Native Americans nor African Americans.

Censorship of the Mexican American story in American annals began long before 1848 when the United States dismembered Mexico as a booty of war (1846-1848), and per the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of February 2, 1848 annexed more than half of Mexico in what is known as The Mexican Cession—a land mass more than the size of Spain, France and Italy combined (529,000 sq. miles) the third                                 

The Mexican Cession largest acquisition of territory in US history now constituting the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and pars of Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. That land-grab fulfilled the American dream of a nation from sea to shining sea. The flies in the ointment were the Mexicans—viewed as that vermin spawned by the Spaniards and the mongrel horde of Indian women—Mestizos as they came to be called but identified in the 20^th century as La Raza Cosmica (the Cosmic People) by Jose Vasconcelos, the Mexican educator.

Arizona tried muzzling Mexican American Studies but the state’s foundation for that action was declared unconstitutional by a Federal Judge in Arizona on August 23, 2017 because Arizona’s ban of Mexican American Studies violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the American Constitution.  The judge concluded that racism was the animus propelling the Arizona ban of Mexican American Studies. 

In Texas, Governor Rick Perry railed that if things continued as they were Texas would have no other option than to secede from the Union—just like it did when it decided to join the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Secession is a mighty big gamble. It didn’t work the first time for segregationists and it won’t work this time for racists. In Texas, the Textbook Massacre is actuated by the mentality found in Arizona—“we know what belongs in the textbooks our kids read,” say white Texans.  Never mind that the majority of kids in Texas schools are Latinos and that their history ought to be represented in those textbooks—but isn’t. What are we to do when the governor of Texas thumbs his nose at public opinion and retorts that Texans know better? Where does that leave Tejanos? And when the governor threatens to secede from the Union if he doesn’t get his way, does he really think that Tejanos (Texas Latinos) will follow him like lemmings into that abyss of raging hyperbole? Na, na, na, na, na!

Ortego, Texas Textbook Massacre

This insanity has been going on for more than 20 years. Thirteen years ago in 2005 I made a presentation to the Texas State Board of Education (same Board, different folks) on “History and its Lacunae,” cautioning the Board not to go down the road it has finally wrong-headedly gone down. I explained how appalled I was by “the historical record in the American history textbooks which I have reviewed for this presentation and which are being considered for state adoption and use in Texas public schools, for nowhere in these texts is the story of American Hispanics fully told, particularly the story of Mexican Americans.” The Board did not listen then but has relented now except on the title for the Mexican American Study course. In real hegemonic fashion the Board deigns to know what is best for its subjects.

The Mexican American Study course is not about States’ Rights in regulating education per the 10^th Amendment, it’s about the First Amendment: Censorship and Intellectual Freedom. White Texan Supremacists are trying to white-out (perhaps the better word is “whitewash”) anything that’s not white in the textbooks used in the Texas public schools. This sure smacks of censorship, especially in voiding the presence of Cesar Chavez in the social studies textbooks. Thurgood Marshall was also on the chopping block. 

Nevertheless, Val Benavides,  TFN Outreach and Field Director, posted:

Today we’re celebrating a historic vote at the State Board of Education: the creation of an elective course in Mexican American studies for Texas public schools. The board also voted to create a process for approving other ethnic studies courses in the future.

These courses will help students across the state learn that the story of Texas and our nation includes the experiences and contributions of Mexican Americans and other people from diverse backgrounds. For too long those stories have been excluded from our classrooms.

Let’s be clear: This victory came after years of tireless work by scholars and activists who educated the public and policymakers, rallied supporters, and testified and lobbied at the state board. They faced setbacks along the way, but they kept their eyes on the goal and demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to bring important change.

We at TFN have been proud to stand with and support these leaders and advocates. And we will work with them as the state board approves curriculum standards for Mexican American studies and other ethnic studies courses.

¡Sí se puede!

It appears, however, that the Texas School Board sees the handwriting on the wall and while not capitulating entirely on this issue at this time, they’ve reserved the right to designate the title of the course—Americans of Mexican Descent, a throwback to the designation for Mexican Americans used by the Library of Congress 50 years ago. Here again, the white majority telling us who we are. But Dennis Bixler-Marquez, Director of Chicano Studies at UT-El Paso sees a glimmer of an unintended outcome in the decision of the Texas Board of Education’s approval of the Mexican American Study elective course when he said that the MAS course was not only for Mexican Americans (El Paso Times, 4/15/18, Borderlands, 1B/2B) but for everybody. Indeed, all Texans, nay, all Americans should know the Mexican American story. We should all know each other’s story—in their aggregate is the American story: immigrants and indigenous.

Juan Tejeda has it right:

Mexican American Studies and the historic vote and controversial decision to change the name of the MAS course by the Texas State Board of Education in CBS Austin below. The TXSBOE will be taking their final vote on this issue today in Austin. We are not hyphenated Americans. We are Native Americans. Mexican American Studies is an established Field of Study in Texas as authorized by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Call it what it is: a Mexican American History course for high school students in Texas. This is an elective course. Students don't have to take it if they don't want to. Tanto political pedo just to approve one elective course in Mexican American Studies in the state's history. #ApproveMAS

The insanity of purported conservative content replacing time-tested content traditional in social studies textbooks belies not only logic but the factual. The situation over textbooks in Texas is nothing more than “moral casuistry” based on evisceration of what has emerged as the Chicano Canon viewed as antithetical to the orthodox canon of American hegemony.

O

ur concepts of race do not emerge from antiquity. They spring from the Age of Enlightenment in Europe. Notions of race, predicated on a matrix of ancestry, ethnicity, religion, and cultural practices, reveal how deep-seated racial prejudice is. The Jefferson ideal of equality falls short in American discussions of race. Despite the ideal, Jefferson himself believed that the differences between the races were “fixed in nature” and therefore the equality set out in the Declaration of Independence did not apply to all.

At the core of American racial studies one finds the American School of Anthropology and its theory of polygeny—that a hierarchy of human races had separate creations. Like the Nazi school of human differences, the American anthropologist Samuel Morton developed a scheme of racial differences based on cranial capacity to prove his theory that “Caucasian and Mongolian races had the highest cranial capacity and therefore the highest levels of intelligence, while Africans had the lowest cranial capacity and thus the lower levels of intelligence” (Ibid.).

What are we to do when the governor of Texas like the governor of Arizona thumbs his/her nose at public opinion and retorts that the citizens of their states know what’s good for their states? Where does that leave Latinos? And when the governor of Texas threatens to secede from the Union if he doesn’t get his way, does he really think that Tejanos (Texas Latinos) will follow him like lemmings into that worm hole of raging hyperbole? 

What conclusion can be drawn from the xenophobic ethnic cleansing spreading across Arizona and Texas? The conclusion is that xenophobic whites in those states are out to get rid of “Mexicans”—whether they’re citizens or not? That may sound like a harsh judgment, but “Mexicans” are left with little room to maneuver in this ethnic cleansing. White Arizonans and Texans see the world through the prism of whiteness, a prism that wants to white-out all traces of their historically Mexican past and present.

Like Arizona, the history of white Texas is studded with anti-Mexican sentiments. Not surprisingly, Arizona statehood was delayed until 1912 by Republican Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana until the territory of Arizona had a white population that outnumbered the “Mexican” population there. But the insistence on a Mexican American Study course is to keep national mnemonic seepage at bay—that is, historic amnesia. 

Oscar Martinez, the historian, explains:

The creation of the U.S. –Mexico border in the mid-nineteenth century separated those Mexicans who lived north of the Rio Grande from the motherland, converting them into an ethnic minority in the United States. . . For Border Chicanos, the psychological consequences of continued separation from the U.S. mainstream and of mixed emotion toward Mexico will remain deep and acute.

--Martinez,“Border Chicanos” from Troublesome Border, University of Arizona Press, 1988. 

This is why Mexican American Studies.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Historia Chicana

Mexican American Studies

University of North Texas

Denton, Texas

CENSORING MEXICAN AMERICAN STUDIES IN TEXAS SCHOOLS IS NOT ONLY ETHNIC CLEANSING BUT ALSO CENSORSHIP AND MUFFLING OF THE FIRST AND FOURTEENTH AMENDMENTS by Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

There’s a nativist streak in the American psyche that emerges periodically to unravel the constitutional gains of American society, moving the nation more to the right—in a sort of dance macabre of the American national zeitgeist; in other words: something akin to an American Nazi Party (with the word “Nazi” being short for “National”). What has kept this Nazi zeitgeist at bay has been the vigilance of Americans working to create “a more perfect union,” committed to the preservation and process of democracy as articulated in the American Constitution.  What is little cogitated is that democracy is a process not a product.

That process has long held at bay inclusion of the real story of the American people, including those of color, starting with the story of Native Americans, then African Americans, and Mexican Americans. Other non-color groups have been given short shrift in the American Story as well. The real story of who we are as a nation has yet to be told, perhaps because it’s still an unfolding story. There’s little doubt that the American story today is not the same story as told by the French American writer J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur in his 3^rd Letter fro an American Farmer first published in 1782: he wrote, “they are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed, that race now called Americans have arisen.” He did not include Native Americans nor African Americans.

Censorship of the Mexican American story in American annals began long before 1848 when the United States dismembered Mexico as a booty of war (1846-1848), and per the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of February 2, 1848 annexed more than half of Mexico in what is known as The Mexican Cession—a land mass more than the size of Spain, France and Italy combined (529,000 sq. miles) the third                                 The Mexican Cession          largest acquisition of territory in US history now constituting the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and pars of Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. That land-grab fulfilled the American dream of a nation from sea to shining sea. The flies in the ointment were the Mexicans—viewed as that vermin spawned by the Spaniards and the mongrel horde of Indian women—Mestizos as they came to be called but identified in the 20^th century as La Raza Cosmica (the Cosmic People) by Jose Vasconcelos, the Mexican educator.

Arizona tried muzzling Mexican American Studies but the state’s foundation for that action was declared unconstitutional by a Federal Judge in Arizona on August 23, 2017 because Arizona’s ban of Mexican American Studies violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the American Constitution.  The judge concluded that racism was the animus propelling the Arizona ban of Mexican American Studies. 

In Texas, Governor Rick Perry railed that if things continued as they were Texas would have no other option than to secede from the Union—just like it did when it decided to join the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Secession is a mighty big gamble. It didn’t work the first time for segregationists and it won’t work this time for racists. In Texas, the Textbook Massacre is actuated by the mentality found in Arizona—“we know what belongs in the textbooks our kids read,” say white Texans.  Never mind that the majority of kids in Texas schools are Latinos and that their history ought to be represented in those textbooks—but isn’t. What are we to do when the governor of Texas thumbs his nose at public opinion and retorts that Texans know better? Where does that leave Tejanos? And when the governor threatens to secede from the Union if he doesn’t get his way, does he really think that Tejanos (Texas Latinos) will follow him like lemmings into that abyss of raging hyperbole? Na, na, na, na, na!

Ortego, Texas Textbook Massacre

This insanity has been going on for more than 20 years. Thirteen years ago in 2005 I made a presentation to the Texas State Board of Education (same Board, different folks) on “History and its Lacunae,” cautioning the Board not to go down the road it has finally wrong-headedly gone down. I explained how appalled I was by “the historical record in the American history textbooks which I have reviewed for this presentation and which are being considered for state adoption and use in Texas public schools, for nowhere in these texts is the story of American Hispanics fully told, particularly the story of Mexican Americans.” The Board did not listen then but has relented now except on the title for the Mexican American Study course. In real hegemonic fashion the Board deigns to know what is best for its subjects.

The Mexican American Study course is not about States’ Rights in regulating education per the 10^th Amendment, it’s about the First Amendment: Censorship and Intellectual Freedom. White Texan Supremacists are trying to white-out (perhaps the better word is “whitewash”) anything that’s not white in the textbooks used in the Texas public schools. This sure smacks of censorship, especially in voiding the presence of Cesar Chavez in the social studies textbooks. Thurgood Marshall was also on the chopping block. 

Nevertheless, Val Benavides,  TFN Outreach and Field Director, posted:

Today we’re celebrating a historic vote at the State Board of Education: the creation of an elective course in Mexican American studies for Texas public schools. The board also voted to create a process for approving other ethnic studies courses in the future.

These courses will help students across the state learn that the story of Texas and our nation includes the experiences and contributions of Mexican Americans and other people from diverse backgrounds. For too long those stories have been excluded from our classrooms.

Let’s be clear: This victory came after years of tireless work by scholars and activists who educated the public and policymakers, rallied supporters, and testified and lobbied at the state board. They faced setbacks along the way, but they kept their eyes on the goal and demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to bring important change.

We at TFN have been proud to stand with and support these leaders and advocates. And we will work with them as the state board approves curriculum standards for Mexican American studies and other ethnic studies courses.

¡Sí se puede!

It appears, however, that the Texas School Board sees the handwriting on the wall and while not capitulating entirely on this issue at this time, they’ve reserved the right to designate the title of the course—Americans of Mexican Descent, a throwback to the designation for Mexican Americans used by the Library of Congress 50 years ago. Here again, the white majority telling us who we are. But Dennis Bixler-Marquez, Director of Chicano Studies at UT-El Paso sees a glimmer of an unintended outcome in the decision of the Texas Board of Education’s approval of the Mexican American Study elective course when he said that the MAS course was not only for Mexican Americans (El Paso Times, 4/15/18, Borderlands, 1B/2B) but for everybody. Indeed, all Texans, nay, all Americans should know the Mexican American story. We should all know each other’s story—in their aggregate is the American story: immigrants and indigenous.

Juan Tejeda has it right:

Mexican American Studies and the historic vote and controversial decision to change the name of the MAS course by the Texas State Board of Education in CBS Austin below. The TXSBOE will be taking their final vote on this issue today in Austin. We are not hyphenated Americans. We are Native Americans. Mexican American Studies is an established Field of Study in Texas as authorized by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Call it what it is: a Mexican American History course for high school students in Texas. This is an elective course. Students don't have to take it if they don't want to. Tanto political pedo just to approve one elective course in Mexican American Studies in the state's history. #ApproveMAS

The insanity of purported conservative content replacing time-tested content traditional in social studies textbooks belies not only logic but the factual. The situation over textbooks in Texas is nothing more than “moral casuistry” based on evisceration of what has emerged as the Chicano Canon viewed as antithetical to the orthodox canon of American hegemony.

O

ur concepts of race do not emerge from antiquity. They spring from the Age of Enlightenment in Europe. Notions of race, predicated on a matrix of ancestry, ethnicity, religion, and cultural practices, reveal how deep-seated racial prejudice is. The Jefferson ideal of equality falls short in American discussions of race. Despite the ideal, Jefferson himself believed that the differences between the races were “fixed in nature” and therefore the equality set out in the Declaration of Independence did not apply to all.

At the core of American racial studies one finds the American School of Anthropology and its theory of polygeny—that a hierarchy of human races had separate creations. Like the Nazi school of human differences, the American anthropologist Samuel Morton developed a scheme of racial differences based on cranial capacity to prove his theory that “Caucasian and Mongolian races had the highest cranial capacity and therefore the highest levels of intelligence, while Africans had the lowest cranial capacity and thus the lower levels of intelligence” (Ibid.).

What are we to do when the governor of Texas like the governor of Arizona thumbs his/her nose at public opinion and retorts that the citizens of their states know what’s good for their states? Where does that leave Latinos? And when the governor of Texas threatens to secede from the Union if he doesn’t get his way, does he really think that Tejanos (Texas Latinos) will follow him like lemmings into that worm hole of raging hyperbole? 

What conclusion can be drawn from the xenophobic ethnic cleansing spreading across Arizona and Texas? The conclusion is that xenophobic whites in those states are out to get rid of “Mexicans”—whether they’re citizens or not? That may sound like a harsh judgment, but “Mexicans” are left with little room to maneuver in this ethnic cleansing. White Arizonans and Texans see the world through the prism of whiteness, a prism that wants to white-out all traces of their historically Mexican past and present.

Like Arizona, the history of white Texas is studded with anti-Mexican sentiments. Not surprisingly, Arizona statehood was delayed until 1912 by Republican Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana until the territory of Arizona had a white population that outnumbered the “Mexican” population there. But the insistence on a Mexican American Study course is to keep national mnemonic seepage at bay—that is, historic amnesia. 

Oscar Martinez, the historian, explains:

The creation of the U.S. –Mexico border in the mid-nineteenth century separated those Mexicans who lived north of the Rio Grande from the motherland, converting them into an ethnic minority in the United States. . . For Border Chicanos, the psychological consequences of continued separation from the U.S. mainstream and of mixed emotion toward Mexico will remain deep and acute.

--Martinez,“Border Chicanos” from Troublesome Border, University of Arizona Press, 1988. 

This is why Mexican American Studies.

Dr. Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, Ph.D. (Renaissance Studies/Chicano Studies)

Scholar in Residence (Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, Public Policy)

Recipient: 2018 NACCS-Tejas Foco Estrella de Aztlan Lifetime Achievement Award

Recipient: 1997 Distinguished Faculty Award, Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English, American and Mexican American

Texas State University System—Sul Ross

Alum: University of Pittsburgh, University of Texas, University of New Mexico

m Western New Mexico University, Miller Library, 1000 College Ave, PO Box 680

Silver City, New Mexico 88062, Branches: Gallup, Deming, Lordsburg & Web

t    O: 575-538-6410, F: 575-538-6178, C: 575-956-5541, e-mail: Philip.Ortego@wnmu.edu

v   Veteran: Sgt. Marine Corps, WW II / Maj. (Res) USAF, Korean Conflict, Early Vietnam Era

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Historia Chicana

Mexican American Studies

University of North Texas

Denton, Texas

Actually, Dr. Phillip D. Ortego y Gasca is 91 already since I'm a little over a year in posting this.  All of us in Mexican American Studies owe so much to this scholar who is a beloved, national treasure. 

Where would we be without scholars like him that are the reason and continuing inspiration for "The Chicano Renaissance?" To Dr. Ortego's credit, Backgrounds of Mexican American Literature, authored by him in 1971 by the University of New Mexico Press, is foundational for what is known today as "Chicano literary history."

I do publish his writings occasionally on this blog.  The most popular post is this one:

IF GEORGE WASHINGTON’S MY FATHER, WHY WASN’T HE CHICANO? by Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

In today's post, he remarks, "with longevity, comes opportunity." And on top of this, is a gracious, beautiful human being that so many of us know and love.  We are not only fortunate, but indebted to pioneers and warriors like him that have fought, and continue to fight, the good fight.

We love you, Felipe!  And a very belated, but nevertheless heartfelt Feliz cumpleaños!

Thank you for being who you are and may God grant you many more years of a life of the mind, body, and spirit!

Angela Valenzuela

c/s

Chicano Renaissance Leader Turns 90, Continues To Teach, Write

August 19, 2016

By Abe Villarreal

© Western New Mexico University

Every calendar holiday, Dr. Felipe Ortego y Gasca sends an email to his colleagues at Western New Mexico University. The email is simple and includes an attachment with a short write up. Ortego, a professor of English and the university’s Scholar-in-Residence, is sharing thoughts on history and social issues he feels are important to his readers.
Now he’s turning 90, and he finds himself the same way he has for several years, behind a computer screen and a keyboard, contributing his ideas on current issues important to culture and society.
“Felipe is a rare combination of academic, activist and a person with sustained creativity,” said Dr. Jack Crocker, Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs at WNMU. “His intellect and experience are an important legacy to our university.”
Considered the principal scholar of the Chicano Renaissance, Ortego is the founder of Chicano literary history having written the first study in the field, Backgrounds of Mexican American Literature, in 1971.
“The piece opened the way for other scholars to consider the scope of Chicano literary history,” said Ortego. “This provided the template for scholars who followed.”
Before turning heads with his alternative perspectives on Chicano literature, Ortego began his colorful life as the child of a field worker in Chicago. He served during World War II as a Marine and his worldview was formed from his travels through Europe. Post-war, Ortego served a ten-year tenure as an Air Force officer during the Korean Conflict and the early Vietnam Era.
He found his passion in the high school classroom, first teaching French, and then finding his identity as a professor of English. Several decades of teaching and serving in administrative academic roles, Ortego continues to influence students, activists and opinion leaders with the written word.
“Writing has been both a creative and therapeutic instrument,” said Ortego. “For me, the writer is always part of the story because we see stories that we tell through our own eyes.”
His latest birthday is only the most recent in a long list of milestones. He has appeared in a major motion picture, written plays and was the fifth Mexican American in the United States to hold a Ph.D. in English. And it has all been sprinkled with controversies along the way.
“My outlook as a professor of English can be characterized as a vision of inclusivity opening the aperture of the English curriculum so that it reflects the mosaic of the American people,” said Ortego. “Not just the privileged texts of British literature.”
Ortego is well known in New Mexico and Texas as an activist, speaking for those he feels are marginalized and championing for Mexican American representation in literature. He organized the Chicano Caucus of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in 1968 at a time when there were very few Chicanos in English.
Ortego turns 90 years old on August 23 and it is appropriate that he has sent out one of his famous emails marking the occasion, this time reminding his colleagues that with longevity, comes opportunity, and Ortego is taking advantage of opportunities he sees on the horizon to continue to write and influence. He’s not done yet. 

IF GEORGE WASHINGTON’S MY FATHER, WHY WASN’T HE CHICANO? by Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

IF GEORGE WASHINGTON’S MY FATHER, 

WHY WASN’T HE CHICANO?

Presented at the Forum on the Elimination of Mexican American Studies and Banning of Chicano Books in the Tucson Unified School District,  Western New Mexico University, February 21, 2012.

By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

Scholar in Residence, Department of Chicana/Chicano and Hemispheric Studies, Western New Mexico University

The title of this piece are the last lines of a poem by Richard Olivas penned some years ago. Sitting in his history class, Olivas asked: “If George Washington’s, my father, why wasn’t he Chicano? The question raised in the poem embodies the reason for the emergence of Mexican American/Chicano Studies.

Indeed, the White Studies curriculum of American schools indoctrinates students in American classrooms in the apodictive historical perspective of the nation—myths and all. Until the advent of the Chicano Movement Mexican Americans knew little about their history in the United States as a colonized people.

Mexican America as an internal American colony

Blame it on Manifest Destiny! By hook or crook, the United States was determined to extend its domain from sea to shining sea. But Mexico was standing in the way. In 1846, President James K. Polk declared war on Mexico on the pretext that Mexico had invaded the United States by crossing into Brownsville, Texas, with armed troops. Only the year before, the United States had admitted Texas into the union even though Mexico had never acknowledged the break-away independence of its Texas province. Despite this international state of affairs with Texas, dead-set on adding Texas to the union, the United States annexed Texas in 1845.

The U.S. War against Mexico lasted less than 2 years, after which per the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed on February 2, 1848, the United States dismembered Mexico and annexed more than half of its territory, permitting Mexicans (by choice) to remain in the American acquired territory of Mexico or to relocate to the new boundaries of Mexico. My father’s family chose to relocate to Guanajuato, Mexico; while my mother’s family chose to remain in San Antonio, Texas, where they had settled in 1731, some 45 years before the break-away American colonies of England in 1776. Most Mexicans opted to stay with what they considered their homeland.

As an internally colonized people, Mexicans—now Americans by fiat—had to learn English, how to navigate the American political system, and how to survive the American schools. I wrote about that survival in 1970 in a piece entitled “Montezuma’s Children,” published as a cover story by The Center Magazine of the John Maynard Hutchins Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. The piece was read into the Congressional Record by Senator Ralph Yarbrough of Texas in 1970 and was recommended for a Pulitzer. 

 

Mexican America comes of Age

For 162 years—from 1848 to 1960—Mexican Americans sought to become the citizens the United States expected them to be: They fought in every American war since then, distinguishing themselves in World War II as the only group to win more Medals of Honor than any other group. Of the 16 million Americans who served in that conflict, 1 million were Mexican Americans. When the United States called on Americans to defend the nation, Mexican Americans have responded overwhelmingly.

Mexican American loyalty and allegiance to the American flag has not waned. What changed was Mexican American expectations of equality for their service to the nation. Those expectations surfaced in 1960 with the Chicano Movement—a groundswell of patriotism in search of recognition. Out of that groundswell emerged the Chicano Renaissance: a literary recognition of their evolution in the American mosaic. In the Fall of 1969 I taught the first course in Mexican American/ Chicano literature at the University of New Mexico. In 1971 I completed Backgrounds of Mexican American Literature (University of New Mexico, 1971), first historical and taxonomic study in the field. In 1960, only 10 novels by Mexican Americans had been published in the United States. Since then, the count has swelled to hundreds. Overall, the count of books by Mexican Americans in the American publishing arena is in the thousands. Mexican Americans realized that if America is to know who Mexican Americans are, then Mexican Americans must write their own stories. Mexican Americans are not who mainstream America says they are; Mexican Americans are the only ones who can say who they are.

Today, the most egregious example of prejudice and discrimination based on ethnicity and ancestry is the situation in the Tucson Independent School District where Mexican American Studies has been eliminated as a program of study and a list of particular books bans their use in classrooms. These are books by eminent Chicano and Native American scholars. Banned also are Civil Disobedience, Brave New World and Shakespeare's The Tempest. The logic defies understanding except that it seems to be based on ethnicity and ancestry.

All of this hullaballoo is the result of Arizona House Bill 2281 signed by Governor Jan Brewer banning Ethnic Studies Programs (which includes Chicano Studies) on the grounds that these Programs advocate ethnic separatism and encourages Latinos to rise up and create a new territory out of the southwestern region of the United States. Perhaps those Xenophobes need a history lesson on how the Hispanic Southwest came into the American fold. They also need to look at school textbooks to see how under-represented Asian Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, and Mexican Americans are in those textbooks. Which is why we need Asian American Studies, African American Studies, Native American Studies, and Mexican American Studies. What are white Arizonans really afraid of? HB 2281 has come to the attention of the United Nations which condemns the Bill, citing Arizona’s rage against immigration and ethnic minorities as “a disturbing pattern of hostile legislative activity.” The better word would be “racism.”

Chicano Studies as the Voice of Chicanos

Forty-eight years ago when I began university teaching after some years as a high school teacher of French, there was no Chicano Stud­ies. That is, no Chicano Studies as an organized field of study. To be sure, there were Mexican American scholars working on various aspects of Mexican Amer­ican life and its cultural productions, scholars like Aurelio Espinosa, Juan Rael, Arturo Campa, Fray Angelico Chaves, George I. Sanchez, Americo Paredes, and others. Important as this scholarship was, it emerged amorphously, reflecting independ­ent intellectual interests rather than a scholarship reflecting a field of study. This is not to say that some of these scholars may not have considered their work as part of a field of study conceptualized as Mexican American Studies. Despite its lack of an under-pinning, it was a field of Mexican American Studies, its constituent parts subsumed as American folklore. 

 

This situation created a critical barrier to the public discussion and dissemination of information about the presence of Mexican Americans in the Unit­ed States and their contributions to American society. Until 1960 and the emergence of the Chi­cano Movement, Mexican Americans were charac­terized by mainstream American schol­ars–-principally anthropologists and social work­ers–-in terms of the queer, the curious, and the quaint. That is, Mexican Amer­icans were categorized as just another item in the flora and fauna of Americana.

The Chicano Movement–that wave of concientizaci­on that came to bloom among Mexican Americans in the 60's transforming them into Chica­nos– help­ed to change American perceptions about Mexican Americans. While Mexican Americans knew much about Anglo Americans, Anglo Ameri­cans knew little about Mexican Americans.

In 1970 I was recruited to be founding director of the Chicano Studies Program at the University of Texas at El Paso, first such program in the state (and still there). By this time, I had become “conscien­tized” as a Chicano. From 1967 on, I had become identified as a Quinto Sol Writer, that is, among the first wave of Chicano writers of the Chi­cano Renaissance which had its beginning in 1966 with the creation of Quinto Sol Publica­tions.

The Arizona Challenge

Mexican American accounts of who they are are being challenged in Arizona. The Tucson Unified School District in Arizona made headlines in recent weeks when it eliminated its Mexican American Studies program. John Huppenthal, the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, declared the program illegal under a state law that bans racially-divisive classes. Books by Mexican American authors have been yanked from TUSD classrooms: Message to Aztlán by Rodolfo Corky Gonzales (2001) and Chicano! A History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement by Arturo Rosales (1997).

Everywhere, there are xenophobic and fas­cist forces that threaten the existence of Chicano Studies. Mainstream suspicions about the ideological agenda of Chicano Studies has become paranoiac. In Arizona there are legislative initiatives to remove from the schools programs deemed to be seditious, programs that promote divisiveness and breed revo­lution, programs like Chic­ano Studies–any ethnic studies program that challen­ges Western values. One Arizona legislator believes that such an initiative will restore the image of the United States as a “melt­ing pot”—that relic salvaged from the reliquary of dystopic America.

Tony Diaz, founder of the literary nonprofit Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say is organizing a caravan from Houston to Tucson over spring break to raise awareness about the situation and taking Hispanic books to Tucson students. He calls it the Librotraficante movement. It begins in Houston on Monday, March 12 and ends in Tucson on Saturday, March 17. Along the way, the caravan will stop in San Antonio, El Paso and Albuquerque, for read-ins and other activities. The caravan will be filled with authors and activists, accruing people as it proceeds toward Tucson.

Como una hija querida, tenemos que defender Chicano Studies porque si no, perderemos nuestro futuro. That’s too important a future to lose, too ex­acting a price to pay. This is the exact moment of history for Chicanos to rise to the occasion. Inaction sustains the status quo. Now, more than ever, we must band together in common cause. Chicano Stud­ies deserves no less. Actually, all Americans must stand up to this current wave of xenophobia.

WORKS CENSORED OR BANNED BY THE TUCSON SCHOOL DISTRICT PER SB 2281

American Government/Social Justice/Education

• Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years (1998) by B. Bigelow and B. Peterson
• The Latino Condition: A Critical Reader (1998) by R. Delgado and J. Stefancic
• Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (2001) by R. Delgado and J. Stefancic
• Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2000) by P. Freire
• United States Government: Democracy in Action (2007) by R. C. Remy
• Dictionary of Latino Civil Rights History (2006) by F. A. Rosales
• Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology (1990) by H. Zinn

American History/Mexican American Perspectives

• Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (2004) by R. Acuña
• The Anaya Reader (1995) by R. Anaya
• The American Vision (2008) by J. Appleby et el.
• Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years (1998) by B. Bigelow and B. Peterson
• Drink Cultura: Chicanismo (1992) by J. A. Burciaga
• Message to Aztlán: Selected Writings (1997) by R.  Gonzales
• De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views Multi-Colored Century (1998) by E. S. Martínez
• 500 Años Del Pueblo Chicano/500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures (1990) by E. S. Martínez
• Codex Tamuanchan: On Becoming Human (1998) by R. Rodríguez
• The X in La Raza II (1996) by R. Rodríguez
• Dictionary of Latino Civil Rights History (2006) by F. A. Rosales
• A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (2003) by H. Zinn

English/Latino Literature

• Ten Little Indians (2004) by S. Alexie
• The Fire Next Time (1990) by J. Baldwin
• Loverboys (2008) by A. Castillo
• Women Hollering Creek (1992) by S. Cisneros
• Mexican White Boy (2008) by M. de la Pena
• Drown (1997) by J. Díaz
• Woodcuts of Women (2000) by D. Gilb
• At the Afro-Asian Conference in Algeria (1965) by E. Guevara
• Color Lines: "Does Anti-War Have to Be Anti-Racist Too?" (2003) by E. Martínez
• Culture Clash: Life, Death and Revolutionary Comedy (1998) by R. Montoya et al.
• Let Their Spirits Dance (2003) by S. Pope Duarte
• Two Badges: The Lives of Mona Ruiz (1997) by M. Ruiz
• The Tempest (1994) by W. Shakespeare
• A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (1993) by R. Takaki
• The Devil's Highway (2004) by L. A. Urrea
• Puro Teatro: A Latino Anthology (1999) by A. Sandoval-Sanchez & N. Saporta Sternbach
• Twelve Impossible Things before Breakfast: Stories (1997) by J. Yolen
• Voices of a People's History of the United States (2004) by H. Zinn

• Live from Death Row (1996) by J. Abu-Jamal
• The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven (1994) by S. Alexie
• Zorro (2005) by I. Allende
• Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1999) by G. Anzaldua
• A Place to Stand (2002), by J. S. Baca
• C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans (2002), by J. S. Baca
• Healing Earthquakes: Poems (2001) by J. S. Baca
• Immigrants in Our Own Land and Selected Early Poems (1990) by J. S. Baca
• Black Mesa Poems (1989) by J. S. Baca
• Martin & Mediations on the South Valley (1987) by J. S. Baca
• The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools (1995) by D. C. Berliner and B. J. Biddle
• Drink Cultura: Chicanismo (1992) by J. A Burciaga
• Red Hot Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Being Young and Latino in the United States (2005) by L. Carlson & O. Hijuielos
• Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Growing up Latino in the United States (1995) by L. Carlson & O. Hijuelos
• So Far From God (1993) by A. Castillo
• Address to the Commonwealth Club of California (1985) by C. E. Chávez
• Women Hollering Creek (1992) by S. Cisneros
• House on Mango Street (1991), by S. Cisneros
• Drown (1997) by J. Díaz
• Suffer Smoke (2001) by E. Diaz Bjorkquist
• Zapata's Discipline: Essays (1998) by M. Espada
• Like Water for Chocolate (1995) by L. Esquievel
• When Living was a Labor Camp (2000) by D. García
• La Llorona: Our Lady of Deformities (2000), by R. Garcia
• Cantos Al Sexto Sol: An Anthology of Aztlanahuac Writing (2003) by C. García-Camarilo et al.
• The Magic of Blood (1994) by D. Gilb
• Message to Aztlan: Selected Writings (2001) by Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales
• Saving Our Schools: The Case for Public Education, Saying No to "No Child Left Behind" (2004) by Goodman et al.
• Feminism is for Everybody (2000) by b hooks
• The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child (1999) by F. Jiménez
• Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools (1991) by J. Kozol
• Zigzagger (2003) by M. Muñoz
• Infinite Divisions: An Anthology of Chicana Literature (1993) by T. D. Rebolledo & E. S. Rivero
• ...y no se lo trago la tierra/And the Earth Did Not Devour Him (1995) by T. Rivera
• Always Running - La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. (2005) by L. Rodriguez
• Justice: A Question of Race (1997) by R. Rodríguez
• The X in La Raza II (1996) by R. Rodríguez
• Crisis in American Institutions (2006) by S. H. Skolnick & E. Currie
• Los Tucsonenses: The Mexican Community in Tucson, 1854-1941 (1986) by T. Sheridan
• Curandera (1993) by Carmen Tafolla
• Mexican American Literature (1990) by C. M. Tatum
• New Chicana/Chicano Writing (1993) by C. M. Tatum
• Civil Disobedience (1993) by H. D. Thoreau
• By the Lake of Sleeping Children (1996) by L. A. Urrea
• Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life (2002) by L. A. Urrea
• Zoot Suit and Other Plays (1992) by L. Valdez
• Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert (1995) by O. Zepeda

UPDATE, Monday, January 16, 2012

Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya

• Yo Soy Joaquin/I Am Joaquin by Rodolfo Gonzales
• Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea
• The Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea