Embracing Latinidad: Beyond Nationalism in the History of Education

Abstract

This article provides a rationale and suggests an approach for investigating the school activism of Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans in the history of education. This more inclusive and comparative approach to Latino activism deepens the understanding of their complex struggles for equality and pluralism in American education. It shows how different groups of Latinos engaged in multiple but parallel struggles for increased learning across space and time and achieved different results. Their efforts expanded, extended, and diversified the historic struggle for education waged primarily by ethnic Mexican activists in the first half of the 20th century.

key words:

• Latino educational history
• comparative education history
• Latinos
• contestation
• advocacy
• activism

Notes

¹The term Latino is used here as an umbrella for several nationality groups, such as Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Central and South Americans. The terms ethnic Mexican and Mexican origin are used to refer to all individuals of Mexican descent whether or not they are citizens. To describe those who are citizens, I use the terms Mexican American or Chicano. The term Anglo is used to refer to White Americans of European descent.

²The total number of undocumented immigrants, most of whom were Mexicans, was estimated to be 5.8 million in 1996, 7 million in 2001, and 11 million in 2005 (see “INS,” 2003; US Undocumented Population Nears 11 Million, 2005).

³Recent data indicate that births, not immigration, account for most of the growth in the nation's Latino population (see Nasser, 2008).

⁴Evidence of this future growth can be found in many states. For instance, an analysis of birth rates found that in 2001 more than 50% of all babies born in California were Latino (see Hayes-Bautista, n.d.).

⁵Acuna (1988, p. 336) noted that around 10,000 students walked out of five Los Angeles schools. Rosales (1997, p. 185) said the number was 15,000.

⁶For a general overview of the various models used to interpret school performance, especially those focusing on culture, see Vaca (1970, 1971). For a more recent study showing how educators viewed Mexican children in cultural deficit terms during the first half of the 20th century, see Blanton (2003).

⁷More recent studies in educational history have moved away from the revisionist arguments of total oppression and provide a more dynamic view of this institution. They show that education is more than merely an instrument of oppression but also a site of contestation. It is an arena in which two or more groups of different statuses meet and clash over specific cultural, political, and economic interests (see, e.g., Spring, 2002, 2005).

⁸For several early and contemporary studies on Latino resistance to educational discrimination, see Munoz (1974a, 1974b) and Navarro (1974). For a historical article on this topic, see De Leon (1974).

⁹Several useful contemporary studies on the education of Cuban and Latino children have been published. On Cubans, see, for instance, Mackey and Beebe (1977) and Silva (1985). On Central Americans, see Suarez-Orozco and Suarez-Orozco (1995). More generally see Seller (1989), and Perlmann and Waldinger (1997).

¹⁰The literature on Mexican American student protests is growing. Much of it, however, is concentrated on Texas or California. For studies on student protests in Texas, see, for instance, Navarro (1995, pp. 115–148), Sanchez (1992a, 1992b), San Miguel (1991), and Guajardo and Guajardo (2004). For studies on California, especially Los Angeles, see Rosales (1997, pp. 175–195), Bernal (1997), Briegel (1974), and Munoz (1974a, 1974b). On Chicago walkouts, see Alanis (2010). On Mexican American and Puerto Rican community protests of unjust desegregation mandates and lack of integration, see San Miguel (2001), Nieto (2001, 388–411), and C. E. Rodriguez and Sanchez (1996).

¹¹For the favorable reception of Cubans and their children in the Miami public schools, see Mackey and Beebe (1977), Pedraza-Bailey and Sullivan (1979), and Silva (1985).

¹²Richard Valencia (2008) has argued that several other policies were contested in addition to these three.

¹³My interpretation of this struggle is gleaned from the following: Fuentes (1976, 1980) and Wasserman (1969). See also more generally the wonderful dissertation by Sonia Lee (2008) showing how Puerto Ricans worked with Black activists to collectively struggle against segregation and for quality education in New York City.

¹⁴Prior to the 1960s, this strategy was aimed primarily at the K–12 public school system. Afterward, efforts were expanded to the postsecondary level. For an overview of the politics of appointing Mexican Americans to federal office, see Pycior (1997, pp. 185, 199–201); see also Donato (1997, p. 61) and Brace (1967).

¹⁵On Cucamonga, see Navarro (1974). On Crystal City, see Navarro (1998) and Shockley (1974, pp. 111–149).

¹⁶On the clash between Latinos and Blacks in the search for a superintendent for the Houston schools, see McAdams (2000). For information on Chicago, see Oclander (1994).

¹⁷For a recent view of the struggle for Latino power in education and the impact it has had on race relations in one Chicago community, see Pallasch (2007).

¹⁸For the rapid acceptance of Cubans as teachers and administrators in the Miami public schools, see Mackey and Beebe (1977) and Pedraza-Bailey and Sullivan (1979). For their assumption of political power in the district, see Warren, Corbett, and Stack (1990).

¹⁹These scholars pressured universities to develop courses dealing with Latino experiences in the United States. Well more than 100 programs and a smaller number of academic departments and centers in Latina/o Studies were teaching Latino courses by the late 1980s. Most of them had anywhere between 3 and 30 courses specifically on the Latina/o experience (see Schorr, 1988, pp. 327–330; see also R. A. Gutierrez, 1994).

²⁰In another study, John S. Gains (1972) noted that the “treatment of Mexican Americans in American history textbooks has been grossly inaccurate, subjective, and marred by the omission of important facts, the use of stereotypes, and elements of latent nativism” (p. 35).