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HISPANICOUTLOOK

MAGAZINE
OCTOBER 06, 2008

CONTENTS
_______________________________________________________
* Candidates Shape Policies on Education

10

Is Higher Ed Governance Stewardship or Sham?

13

Getting the Hispanic Vote

14

College Summit Helping Minority Students


Navigate the Road to College

17

* 2008 Hispanic Heritage Foundation Award

20

Winners Offer Hope & Inspiration


Dr. Manuel Penichet: Innovative Researcher,
Devoted Mentor

26

* Latino Scorecard on Higher Education

28

* UNM Responding to a Call of Urgency

30

Why Chicano Studies? By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

34

* Building a Bridge to College: Simple Steps for Parents

38

New York City Techs Professor Espinoza-Snchez is First on Five


Counts Inspires Students with Impressive Accomplishments

40

Latina Business Leader, a Change Agent for Justice


and Opportunity

42

* These articles are available online at: www.hispanicoutlook.com


HISPANIC OUTLOOK

10/06/2008

WHY CHICANO STUDIES?


From Hispanic Outlook Magazine, October 6, 2008. Presented at the Annual NACCS Conference of the National Association for Chicana
and Chicano Studies, Austin, Texas, March 21, 2008. Posted on Immigration, Education, and Globalization: U.S.Mexico site, Saturday,
March 29, 2008

By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca


Scholar in Residence, Western New Mexico University (an Hispanic Serving Institution); Professor Emeritus of English, Texas State
University SystemSul Ross; Founding Director of the Chicano Studies Program, University of Texas at El Paso, 1970-1972 (first
Chicano Studies Program in the state); Faculty Member, Mexican American Graduate Studies Program, San Jose State University, 197476; Founding Member, Mexican American Studies Program, Texas State University SystemSul Ross, 1996-1999; Founding Member
(2007-2011) and Chair (2008-2011), Chicana/Chicano and Hemispheric Studies Department, Western New Mexico University.

orty-five 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 inte-rests 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, regarded as a tribe, Mexican Americans were categorized as just another item in the flora
and fauna of Americana in precisely the same way
American Indians were categorized.
The Chicano Movementthat wave of concien-

tizacion 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. From 1848 to 1912the
period of transition for the conquest generation of
Mexicans who became Americans per the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848Mexican
Americans were regarded poorly by the American
public. So poorly, in fact, that the territories of New
Mexico and Arizona were delayed statehood until their
populations were predominantly Anglo American.
In Two Years before the Mast, Richard Henry
Dana described the Mexican Americans as an idle,
thriftless people who could make nothing for themselves (1959: 9). And in 1852, Colonel Monroe reported to Washington that the New Mexicans are
thoroughly debased and totally incapable of self-government, and there is no latent quality about them that
can ever make them respectable. They have more Indian blood than Spanish, and in some respects are below
the Pueblo Indians, for they are not as honest or as
industrious (Congressional Globe, 32nd Con-gress, 2nd
Session, January 10, 1853, Appendix, p. 104).
Four years later, W.W.H. Davis, United States
Attorney for the Territory of New Mexico, wrote a
propos his experiences with Mexican Americans that
they possess the cunning and deceit of the Indian, the
politeness and the spirit of revenge of the Spaniard, and
the imaginative temperament and fiery impulses of the
moor. He described them as smart and quick but
lacking the stability and character and soundness of
intellect that give such vast superiority to the AngloSaxon race over every other people (New Mexico and
her People, 1857, 85-86).
In 1874, General William Tecumseh Sherman qui-

pped before a committee of the House of Representatives that Mexico be prevailed upon to take back
the territory of New Mexico (Arnold L. Rodriguez,
New Mexico in Transition, New Mexico Historical
Review, XXIV, July 1949, 186). And in 1902, Senator
Albert Beveridge of Indiana objected to statehood for
the New Mexico Territory on the grounds that the
majority of people in New Mexico [could] speak only
[Spanish]. . . . Illiteracy was high and the arid
conditions of the southwest imposed serious limitations on agriculture (Robert W. Larson, New Mexicos Quest for Statehood 1846-1912, 1968: 215).
Even after 64 years as Americans, Mexican Americans were considered foreigners in their own land.
Little thought was given to the fact that Mexican
Americans were not immigrants to the United States,
that they were a territorial minority cum Americans
as a booty of war, that the border had crossed them,
and not the other way around. By the 20th century,
mainstream Americans had forgotten that as a consequence of the U.S.Mexico War of 1846-1848 Mexico
was dismembered, giving up more than half of its
territory to the United States: a territory now constituting the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona,
California, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado, as well as
parts of Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma, a territory
larger than France, Spain, and Italy combined.
During the period of Americanization from 1912 to
1960, Mexican Americans fared little better despite
their efforts to become Americans. During this period,
from 1913 to 1930, more than a million and a half
Mexicans made their way north from Mexico to the
United States, owing to the destabilization of Mexico
during its civil war from 1913 to 1921. This influx of
Mexicans to the United States plus the population of
Mexicans who were part of the conquest generation
came to constitute the primary population of Mexican
Americans that has given rise to their present demographics in 21st century America.
We have no definitive count as to the numbers of
Mexicans who came with the dismembered territory.
Figures range from a low of 75,000 to 300,000. The
dismembered territory was certainly not void of population, considering the cities that were part of the
annexed territorySan Antonio, El Paso, Santa Fe and
the San Luis Valley of Colorado, Tucson, San Diego,
Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, San
Francisco, and Pueblo, Colorado, not counting the
hundreds of smaller communities dotting the landscape.

The third factor in the demographic growth of


Mexican Americans was the 20 year immigration
compact between the United States and Mexico that
brought thousands of Mexican braceros (laborers)
into the country between 1942 and 1962. This demographic troika of Mexican Americans (conquest generation, civil war refugees, and braceros) now numbers
some 30 million, its growth due principally to fertility
abetted certainly by a small but steady annual ingress
of immigrants since 1962.
These 30 million Mexican Americans are 66% of the
American Hispanic population. That is, two out of
three American Hispanics are Mexican Americans.
These are not undocumented workers; they are American citizens. But in the current wave of nativist hysteria, American Hispanics including Mexican Americans are regarded as aliens whose expedient deportation is desirable in the national interest. As American
citizens, Mexican Americans have been thrown into the
mix with undocumented Hispanic workers not only
from Mexico but throughout Latin America, under the
rubric of illegal immigrants. This is Why Chicano
Studies? Americans need to understand that Mexican
Americans are not a new population. That they have
been part of the American enterprise for 160 years.
And this is why after almost 40 years I am still
convinced about the need for Chicano Studies.

hen I joined the English Department at


New Mexico State University almost half a
century ago, I was the only Mexican American in the department and unaware about Mexican
American Studies, though I had studied Spanish literature, Mexican literature, and Latin American literature
as well as English literature and American literature.
My parents taught me about Mexico. I knew that a
branch of mothers family had settled in San Antonio,
Texas, in 1731. But about Mexican Americans in
general, I knew nothing except that we had relatives in
Chicago and Pittsburgh (whom we visited often), as
well as in Texas.
In my comparative studies classes at the University
of Pittsburgh between 1948 and 1952, I learned
nothing about Mexican Americans except what I
learned from the long-time Mexican American communities there. But none of that information spurred
my curiosity to learn about the history of Mexican
Americans in the United States. The apodictic value
system of the United States held me firmly in its grip,
reinforcing the mantra that I was an American. Later, a

Chicano poem would ask: If George Washington was


my father, why wasnt he Chicano? And later, I would
ask: Why do our teachers and textbooks emphasize a
special relationship between the United States and
England as the mother country. In a country of E
Pluribus Unum (One out of many), the United States
has many mother countries. The population of the United States is the world.
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 conscienticized 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 headed by Octavio Romano. By 1970, I
had written extensively about Mexican Americans and
their plight in the United States. In the Fall of 1969 I
had taught the first course in Chicano literature in the
country. By 1970, I was finishing up Backgrounds of
Mexican American Literature, first literary history in
the field (University of New Mexico, 1971).
In 1969, California had organized the first Chicano
Studies Program in the country. In the following two
years many more Chicano Studies Programs were
inaugurated throughout the Hispanic Southwest. But all
was not serene in Aztlanthe name Chicanos chose to
identify the Hispanic Southwest, that territory
dismembered from Mexico as a consequence of the
U.S. War with Mexico (1846-1848) and annexed by
the United States per the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
signed on February 2, 1848.
The Handbook for the organization of Chicano
Studies was developed in California as El Plan de
Santa Barbara (The Plan of Santa Barbara). This was
the blueprint we used in developing the Chicano
Studies Program at the University of Texas at El Paso
in 1970. Our guiding principal per the Plan de Santa
Barbara was: a Chicano Studies Program not controlled by Chicanos is not a Chicano Studies Program.
Not surprisingly, Chicano students, faculty, and
community leaders pressed hard for Chicano control of
the Chicano Studies Program at the University of Texas
at El Paso, despite institutional and system resistance.
That resistance was so obstructive, that only a student
takeover of the administration building with the
president as hostage in December of 1971 precipitated
the necessary impetus for the institutionalization of
Chicano Studies.

Reluctantly, the intransigence of the university


turned to half-hearted support for Chicano Studies. Our
aim was to embed Chicano Studies courses in as many
departments as we could. Our recruitment efforts were
effective, bringing to the UT El Paso campus Chicano
luminaries like Rodolfo de la Garza in Political
Science, Donald Castro in English, Hector Serrano in
Theater, and Tomas Arciniega in Education. We
increased the number of Chicano faculty substantially,
but still nowhere near a percentage reflecting our
numbers in the American population or our numbers in
El Pasoa community more than 75 percent mejicano
at the time.
More than half the students at the University of
Texas at El Paso in 1970 were mejicanos, but Mexican
American visibility on campus was restricted to the
maintenance workers, janitors, and gardeners. Our
objectives for Chicano Studies were twofold: not only
would Chicano Studies help us to enlighten both Chicanos and non-Chicanos about who we were, but Chicano Studies would enable us to promote our visibility
beyond maintenance workers, janitors, and gardeners.
Moreover, Chicano Studies would provide the missing
pieces of American history anent Mexican Americans.
Chicano Studies would show Americans the rich
heritage of Mexican Americans and the splendor of
their indigenous past. This was one way to bring
Chicanos into the consciousness of the American mainstream, though Chicano Studies was not expli-citly a
mainstream venue. Chicano Studies was the alternative
to the mainstream. That was Octavio Romanos
argument in the editorial of the first issue of El Grito in
1967. Since the American mainstream rejected Chicanos, Chicanos would establish their own institutions
and outlets for their cultural productions. Chicano
achievement was not predicated on the approval of the
mainstream. While Chicanos wanted to be in the
mainstream they would not be brown copies of whites
in the mainstream.
Now, almost forty years later, looking back on the
progress and evolution of Chicano Studies I wonder
how much mainstreaming has taken place. And whether mainstreaming has been the ignis fatuus it has
always been for Chicanos. In a recent edition of The
American Tradition in Literature published by McGraw Hill, the 2500 page anthology did not include
one American Hispanic writer (that is, an Hispanic
writer who is of the United States and not from Hispanic America). Not till page 2299 do we see an
Hispanic writer: Isabel Allende, the Chilean writer who

now lives and writes in the United States. Not one


Chicano writer appears in the McGraw Hill anthology
which purports to be the American tradition in literature. This situation would be like including Chinua
Achebe in the anthology as representative of African
American writers.
Five decades later Chicanos are still invisible to the
American mainstream, although a number of Chicano
writers have made their way into that mainstream.
Despite Chicano nationalism, there is a wave of
Chicanos who desperately seek approval of the white
mainstream which progressively validates Chicanos ho
most reflect its values. In the background, how-ever,
silent running, are those die-hard Chicano venues like
Arte Publico Press and The Bilingual Review Press
which continue to nurture the aspirations of Chicano
writers still marginalized by mainstream presses.
In 1968 the absence of minority writers in anthologies of American literature, especially those
anthologies used in colleges and universities, was so
exacerbated that the minority caucuses of the National
Council of Teachers of English banded together as the
NCTE Task Force on Racism and Bias in the Teaching
of English, issuing a blistering report entitled Searching for America which detailed just how bad the
situation was. Along with Carlota Cardenas Dwyer and
Jose Carrasco, I was a founding member of that Task
Force. The NCTE Report included the piece on Chicanos and American Literature by Jose Carrasco and
me, later reprinted in The Wiley Reader (1975).
In 1970 I sent a piece on Chicano Poetry: Roots
and Writers to Richard Ohman then editor of College
English. He returned the manuscript with a note saying
he didnt think the article would be of much interest to
the readers of College English, besides he was already
considering a piece on Chicano literature for an upcoming issue of College English. The piece turned out
to be an essay on Chicano literature by a non-Chicano.
The following year I presented Chicano Poetry: Roots
and Writers at the First National Symposium on
Chicano Literature organized by Ed Simmen at Pan
American University in Edinburg, Texas, and published as part of the proceedings along with the
presentations of Tomas Rivera and Jose Reyna. In 1972
the piece was reprinted in Southwestern American Literature. In the meantime, I finished my work on Backgrounds of Mexican American Literature (University
of New Mexico, 1971), first study in the field.

tioned a Chicano Caucus, as had the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. It
appeared that the Chicano voice was gaining in
volume. It also appeared that conceptions of Chicanos
were changing. Helping that change along was establishment of La Luz magazine in Denver in 1972, the
first Hispanic public affairs magazine in English,
organized by Dan Valdes as Publisher and me as Associate Publisher. Over the ten years of my tenure with
La Luz we published dozens of pieces by Chicanos in
various genres. In 1973 Washington Square Press
brought out my anthology of We Are Chicanos which
included many of the early luminaries of the Chicano
Renaissance.

hile there was headway in making the Chicano presence in American society more
visible, Chicano venues began to shrink as
that visibility gave more prominence to Chicanos who
became more attractive to mainstream purveyors. By
the 1990's Chicano venues for literary production had
dwindled to a handful from what had been hundreds of
ephemeral garage presses intent on promoting the
jinetes of Chicano literature. By the 1990's there had
not been a dramatic integration of Chicano perspectives into the academic disciplines. The dozens of
Chicano Studies programs (including those that were
departments) dwindled as well to a few, although today
there are two doctoral programs in Chicano Studies.
Nevertheless, since the 1990's there has been a retreat
from using Chicano Studies as a disciplinary anchor for
promulgating the story of Chicanos in America.
Chicano Studies has become a subset of Hispanic
Studies and Latino Studies, seemingly more palatable
terms than Chicano Studies much the way the term
Latin American became a more palatable term than
Mexican American when the League of United Latin
American Citizens (LULAC) was organized in Corpus
Christi, Texas, in 1929. The term Chicano has been
lost in the lexicon of Hispanicity and Latinismo. More
attention seems to be paid now to members of Hispanic
groups in the United States with minimal population
numbers compared to the 30 million Mexican
Americans currently in the U.S. population (not counting the purported numbers of undocumented Mexicans
in the country). Of the 45 million American Hispanics
count-ed in the Census, two-thirds of them (66 percent)
are Mexican Americans.
The subalternization of Chicanos in Hispanic or
Latino Studies emphasizes the point: Why Chicano

By 1971 the Modern Language Association had sanc-

to undergraduates, Masters students, and doctoral


candidates. Most of these students have been Chicanos. The students we also want to reach are nonChicanos. But they have not signed up for Chicano
Studies courses in numbers to suggest that we are
reaching them with our story. This is also why we need
to keep and strengthen Chicano Studies, why Chicano
Studies must be imbricated into the study of the
American experience.
Last semester (Fall 2007) I taught on-line the
introductory graduate course to Chicano Studies which
is part of our Interdisciplinary Masters Program at
Western New Mexico University. All the graduate students were Chicanos. This indicates the work the
Chicano Faculty Caucus has to do in promoting to all
our students, especially non-Chicanos, the Chicano
courses in our embryonic Chicano Studies Program.
Como una hija querida, tenemos que defender
Chicano Studies porque si no, perderemos nuestro
futuro. Thats 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.
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 Studiesany 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 potthat
relic salvaged from the reliquary of dystopic America.
As Chicanos we must ask ourselves: what is driving this current wave of xenophobic fear? At this
point in time, it is diminution of this fear that is the
essential mission of Chicano Studies.

Studies? Why? Because Chicano Studies is being cut


off a medio grito (at mid-stride), as it were, aborting its
premise and promise. This does not mean, of course,
that the study of Chicanos cannot go on without
academic programs of Chicano Studies. But rooted in
an academic setting of respect and en-couragement,
Chicano Studies provides the ground and lens from and
through which to illuminate the his-torical processes
that have brought Chicanos to this point in American
history. These are the same heur-istic considerations
that undergird other disciplines.
However, suspicions about the ideological agenda
of Chicano Studies have wormed their way into the
debate over Chicano Studies (as in Arizonaa), raising
questions about objectivity, questions Chicanos raised
in the 60's and 70's about the institutional disciplines
that did not include the presence of Chicanos in their
purview. This does not diminish the value of continuing the construction of a Chicano narrative; it just
interposes inhibitions to that construction. The Chicano
Studies programs at the University of Texas at El Paso
and California State University at Northridge have
endured because of their academic rigor and the
passion of their faculty. This is not to say other
Chicano Studies programs lack rigor and passion.
Whether a Chicano Studies program should be disciplinary or interdisciplinary remains a question of
academic inquiry and perspective. At the University of
Texas at El Paso the Chicano Studies Program became
interdisciplinary. But my concern is: without Chicano
Studies in the academy, who will advocate for
Chicanos therein? In the current public debate over
immigration we see the growing hostility towards
Chicanos who are perceived as part of the undocumented hordes of Mexicans invading the United States
as Lou Dobbs and CNN characterize the situation.

he immigration debate avers the proposition


that Americans, by and large, know little about
Chicanos other than what they learn about
them through public media. Everywhere today, Chicanos are being assailed by nativists and jingoists who
see them as progeny of black Spaniards (see Felipe
de Ortego y Gasca, La Leyenda Negra/The Black
Legend, Somos Primos, 2008) and savage Indians.
Chicano Studies becomes, therefore, the instrument
through which Americans can come to see Chicanos in
their own right rather than through the normative view
of mainstream Americans.
For the past 39 years Ive taught Chicano literature

hirty-eight years after my initial experience


with Chicano Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso, I have become part of an effort
in Chicano Studies at Western New Mexico University, an Hispanic Serving Institution whose student
body is about 51 percent Hispanic. Im excited by the
venture as are my Chicano colleagues on campus. Our
joint efforts as a Chicano Faculty Caucus brought the

Chicano Studies program into being. Its a nascent


program ready to take on the challenges of the 21st
century, secure in the knowledge of its historical past
and antecedents. Chicano Studies has never been about

windmills or revolution; its about our place in the


American sun.
Copyright 2008 by the author. All rights reserved.

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