NewsTaco

I hope nothing severe enough ever happens to me to the point where I end up in the 11 o’clock news – simply because I am not a very photogenic person. As a matter of fact, all the pictures I have taken are rather shameful, disturbing and rather offsetting. I would like to say that it is not my fault, but we both know otherwise.

Do you remember that movie “Forrest Gump,” where every picture he took featured him with his eyes closed? I am afflicted by the same infection, except in my case I am usually drunk to the point of no redemption. There are too many pictures out there and my fear is that when I save the president from an assassin’s bullet, there will not be an adequate picture of me to run on the television.

The problem is not a recent one either. When I was a kid, my cousins and I had a tendency of ruining every birthday photo. Some people place finger horns on other people as a joke. Not us. We took it to a whole different level with props and annoying poses. There are some pictures that are not meant for reprint. Then you have to factor in the notion that my ears stuck out like a car door rolling downhill with both front doors open – and the fact I was always missing teeth. It was instant comedy.

All I can say is that my mother had powerful restraint when it came to being in public. Come to think of it, maybe I just had less shame – drunk with the knowledge that she would not reach for her trusty shoe while in public. If you were to look through my family albums, my sister is crying in all of her birthdays from about age 5 to 13. If you flip them with the right wrist action, you could almost make my sister dance like a surreal cartoon.

My senior year yearbook picture looks like a DMV picture. The photographer snapped the picture using an early count, so I look really confused in the picture. The worst part is that he did not even give me a second opportunity to take it. It has taken me a lifetime to live that picture down. Just to add insult to injury, every DMV picture I have ever taken looks exactly like my senior year yearbook picture.

A friend of mine encouraged me to take more pictures, claiming that the mathematical probability of all of them being bad is astronomical. The furrowing of her brow told me that she was making that statement with more hope than faith. She claimed that I have “very displayable features that create an array of physical essentials as a backdrop.” I do not know if she was trying to be politely insulting or insultingly polite. Looking back at that statement, I think it means I have a pair of eyes, ears and lips. I cannot take much credit for that. I think luck played a role in that one.

One day, I will be able to look into the camera and produce a quality picture. That will be the day, when I walk into Sears will all the confidence in the world. My future wife will be my side and my future children will be around me, firmly posted around my knees, and we will all be wearing matching sweaters. However, until that day, I will continue to keep my eyes closed. That will be the picture I will use when it comes time to rescue the children inside the burning school bus from the terrorists. That will be the day when the array of physical essentials my face carries will finally come in handy.

By Eres Nerd

Latinos are part of United States of America.  This standard is not based upon documented status or the ability to speak inglés.  It not based upon the ability to bleach one’s hair a lighter shade of blonde.  No, Latinos are part of the nation because we have produced something more profound — Latino nerds.

A nerd is typically a smart individual that is very much into a specific subject and that subject tends to be nontraditional.  There are Star Wards nerds, technology nerds;  Dr. Who nerds; comic book nerds; anime nerds; literature nerds;  freestyle nerds;  poetry nerds; gaming nerds;  Lucha Libre nerds,  nerds vs. geek nerds;  Tejano nerds and film nerds.

Latino nerds are into both American and Latino popular culture. 

A Latino nerd can usually discuss both whether “Han Shot First” and the awesomeness of El Santo Luchador movies.  They discuss which “Star Trek” series had the most Latinos (Chakoty and Torres on “Star Trek Voyager”) and whether “Sábado Gigante” was better than “Siempre en Domingo” (Answer: the latter was best because they would take the show on the road).  Still, the world of Latino nerds is so vast some would rather discuss adopting Linux as an operating system verse using Windows.

Like many nerds, Latino nerds were the smart kids in school.  Your author is a Latino nerd — big surprise there.  My revelation that I was a Latino nerd occurred in grade school when they started pooling kids in different groups: the smart kids; the average kids; and the cholos.  As part of the smart kids group, I told by the cholitos, “Eres un nerd.”   The cholos were my friends, so it was both a sign of ridicule and respect. These groups tended to be static. A smart kid could go down into another group, but climbing into the smart group was difficult.

As Latino nerds entered high school they were given great responsibility — academic events.  The jocks had football or basketball, the Latino nerds had Academic Decathlon, Odyssey of the Mind, or the high school quiz show.  The stakes were even higher when competing against the white nerds from the rich schools.  A victory against them was a triumph for your barrio and the cholos.  A defeat made you try harder the next time by reading one more book, learning one more math formula and playing another game of trivial pursuit. But, Latino nerds weren’t all school work.  We had time for marching band and selling chocolate bar for the trips.

All this cross-pollination with other Latino nerds created the fascination and obsession with nerd topics.  One learned how to speak Nerd Talk with a Latino accent. This was important since after high school, Latino nerds ventured to college, where there few of them but a great number of other ethnic nerds.  But since nerd talk is universal, the gap between cultures was bridged with nerdy discussions of computers, gaming, science fiction, and life.

Latino nerds are everywhere, but nowhere. Latino nerds are doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, writers and politicians.  Many have adopted the costume of the work professional wearing the dark Brooks Brothers suit or the sensible pumps.  A few have become fashion forward wearing the latest Manolo Blahnik shoes and reading Vogue for the season’s latest trends.  Some have evolved into the Hot Latino Nerd and some still wear plastic eyeglasses from Gual-Mart.

It‘s a universal truth that a nerd won’t reveal themselves unless they are comfortable showing their true nature, usually in the presence of another nerd. If you want confirmation about a Latino nerd for friendship or love, well, just say something nerdy or forward them something like this:

Eres Nerd lives a nerdy life in the borderlands of Estados Unidos and Mexico.

[Video By raimongear; Photo By Nerds On Call]

California State Universities saw record numbers of applications this year, but more interestingly, Latino applicants outnumbered white applicants for the first time ever (based on self-reported data). Here’s the CSU press release:

The submissions came from 258,834 distinct applicants versus 241,166 last year. Potential students typically apply to multiple CSU campuses…

The CSU has also continued a trend of attracting a group of students that reflects the diversity of California. Based on self-reported statistical data, no ethnic or racial group forms a majority among CSU undergraduate applicants. This year also saw a first with Latino applicants outnumbering White applicants by 33.3 percent to 31.2 percent.

This is important for several reasons.

The majority of students in California are Latino, so unless more Latinos apply to college, the state’s future will be one of non-educated professionals.

Secondly, California has a state version of the DREAM Act, important for the previously point.

What do you think?

I grew up during some really strange times. Like 1989. We had already braced through eight years of Ronald Reagan, and George Bush was getting ready to take the helm. I was in Mr. McLean’s sixth grade class when a special visitor arrived. We put our academic instruments away as Mr. McLean introduced a representative officer from the Los Angeles Police Department.

The officer cleared his throat and began his DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) presentation. He spoke in harsh pauses and serious overtones as explained that he was there on a special assignment from the White House. He was there to make sure that we remained drug free – and thus began my matriculation in drug abuse resistance education. I remember he was a young man, probably expecting a zoo-filled with inner city vermin. We looked blankly back at him and asked him why he never brought his gun into the classroom. He said it had to do with safety, similar why police officers never carried guns in airplanes. One of the boys in the back suggested to the officer that it was because he was afraid that we would bull rush him and take it from him. The police officer laughed nervously; after that day, the boy was reassigned to library service during future drug abuse resistance education and matriculation.

The police officer put a foot on a chair in order to demonstrate how “street” or “real” he was as he rested his elbow on his knee. He claimed he would tell it how it was. He brought in plastic bags of white powder and dried up leaves which were supposed to represent cocaine and marijuana. We took him as seriously as we had to. We saw it as an excuse to stop doing fractions, so we asked as many questions as it took in order to get us to lunchtime. We were given all kinds of propaganda – from stickers, to pencils and even t-shirts. We would have probably taken him more seriously if he had brought in the gun in the first place.

However, the reason why we did not take him that seriously was because he had ulterior motives. He wanted us to become low-level informants, by tattling on our parents, family members and neighbors.

This approach was flawed for two reasons. Alcohol and tobacco were lower-tiered members of the evil drug empire. Soon enough, my former class members were sobbing at the possibility that they might have to turn in their moms for having Friday night cocktails with their comadres. The second reason this did not work was because the police officer answered our questions with rhetoric.

“What is going to happen to us if we turn in our mom or dad, where will we go?”

“Well – you will go with someone that loves you enough not to do or sell drugs around you.”

“Like who?”

“Well that’s up to a judge to decide.”

“How will the judge know who loves me?”

“Well, because hopefully it will be someone who cares enough not to do or sell drugs around you – next question.”

We spent about eight Fridays memorizing the rhetoric and acting in skits about things we would do or say when faced by a situation where drugs would be offered. I remember my skit because I played a cop who offered drugs to girls at a party. The police officer stopped my skit and told me that I was wrong because police officers would never mess with drugs. Boy, the Rampart Scandal would do a sloppy job at reinforcing that notion.

At our DARE culmination, I was able to speak as the valedictorian. It was the kind of honor that I wore proudly – even though I was awarded the honor simply because I was the only one who showed up with a speech. Nevertheless, I spoke about the ills of drugs and how I would never fall for peer pressure.

Man, was I wrong.

By DeeDee Garcia Blase, Co-President of the National Tequila Party Movement

May the death of Joaquin Luna not go in vain.

DREAM Act student, Joaquin Luna, recently took his life in Texas. At 18 years old, he had aspirations of becoming an engineer. He was one of ours. He took  his life because he felt as an undocumented immigrant he had nowhere to go. He relied and was hoping for the passage of the DREAM Act in December 2010 that could have been passed with only a handful more Senate votes. I knew there would be dire consequences to the failure of the December 2010 DREAM Act vote, but it is getting tougher and tougher to swallow news like this when we hear of children who feel they have no other option. It’s heart wrenching.  Just think, if the DREAM Act would have passed last December, we would not have to witness this precious life go to waste, and I’m told Joaquin is not the first.

By Elaine Dove

I wonder about the girls and boys I see during the day at my once-a-week volunteer gig at a local school. Most of “my kids” at the school are the sons and daughters of immigrant parents, the sons and daughters of change. Many of them are undocumented. They’re in middle school, entering that time of life where suddenly the question of relationships, and dating, and how you do all that, starts to become extremely important.

And their folks from the Old Country often aren’t on board with how to help their inquisitive, cell-phone-enabled, Facebooking kids with those questions.

As anyone who works with adolescents can tell you, it’s a dicey proposition to let adolescents get most of their information about sex, love, and the world from other adolescents. But what are their parents to do? Their parents are trying to find work and trying to stay off the radar and trying to give their kids a better life. They don’t have the time, the energy or the resources to educate little Katia or Joaquín about all the things kids are wondering about at that age — that, of course, is where someone like me supposedly comes in.

However, I notice that there are very few people like me, very few sons and daughters of change, volunteering in the community outreach program. The vast majority of the volunteers are white, middle class Americans with very little experience with the issues and challenges facing first and second generation immigrant families. It’s what’s called a “known issue,” meaning that everyone knows it’s a problem but no one seems to have much of a solution for it. I do what I can. I tell kids that the time they spend with me is a safe place where they can ask questions about anything they’re wondering about. As it turns out, the sons and daughters of change have a lot of questions.

They live in two worlds — that of school and that of home. I don’t tell them that many of the questions they are wondering about, in terms of love and relationships, are the exact same questions I hear from the children of immigrants in their 20s, 30s and 40s. Some of them are universal — who am I?  What does it mean to love or not to love someone? How do I find my way in life? Others, more poignant, are “our” questions. What does it mean to be Vietnamese, Mexican, Persian, Jewish, Nigerian, Taiwanese, Colombian? Who am I in relationship to these questions? Why didn’t the people who raised me help me more with all of this? These are the questions that haunt, that continue to shape and unfold identity far beyond these fleeting years. And the shame of “not knowing” what other kids know must be cleared and lifted in order for the sons and daughters of change to truly be ourselves.

And then there’s me. Asian but not Asian — that’s me. Am I a bridge between worlds? I consider myself an American, but what do I look like to them? I wonder about that. I’m aware of their quiet, but intent faces, the lightning-fast information download of the adolescent brain. I know they wonder about me. They probably don’t realize that I wonder just as much about them.

Elaine Dove is an artist and healer living in Austin, Texas. For more information, visit her blog.

[Photo By icanteachyouhowtodoit]

Daniel Hernandez Jr., former Congressional intern, credited with helping save Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords’ life after she was shot last January was elected to a school board in Arizona early last week according to the LA Times.

According to the report, the humble hero and political science major made no mention of the tragic shooting incident during his campaign.  Although Hernandez was recognized by the President for his acts during that fateful day last January, the University of Arizona student has claimed that the incident may have detracted people from his efforts to improve education in his district.

Hernandez will serve the same Tuscon area district in which he graduated high school from in 2008.

[Photo By Pete Souza]

By Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez, President of NHI Collegiate Leadership Network

San Antonio, Texas — Each year the National Hispanic Institute invites the top Latino high school and undergraduates to San Antonio for a weekend of intense debate, competition and discussion concerning the future of the Latino community. Students come from Texas, the Northeast and increasingly from countries such as México, Panamá and the Dominican Republic. They are chosen based on their outstanding academic achievements and commitment to community involvement.

I had the honor of attending this year.

The mission of the National Hispanic Institute is to develop the leadership base of the 21st century Latino community. This is accomplished not by using the Civil Rights rhetoric of the past, or portraying our community as needy in order to influence giving by other groups. Instead, the NHI tries to create an asset-driven mindset, to help students use the resources at their disposal, instead of the rhetoric of deficits, to help them inspire social change.

The event kicked off with an official welcome to the San Antonio by Texas State Representative and congressional candidate Joaquín Castro. Following him, the president and founder of the NHI, Ernesto Nieto took the stage. In his remarks Mr. Nieto said “The time has come in the trajectory of our community where we must leave behind perceptions that no longer work and embrace those that will take us into tomorrow.”

The various age groups were then given unique challenges. High school sophomores debated the future of Latino international political order. Juniors graduating seniors were both challenged to creatively think of ways to add economic and intellectual value to the community. And college undergraduates were tasked to create viable social enterprises with both a clear vision and sound business models supporting them.

Even with a compact time period, the results were remarkable and exciting. Proposals utilized social media during the event, organizing hundreds of supporters within a day. Enterprises from the undergraduates are already in the start-up phase. Participants even bolstered their arguments by citing NewsTaco articles written by current Latino thinkers such as Dr. Joseph Villescas.

Winning undergraduate spokesperson Christopher Monsivais of McAllen summed up his experience saying, “What I took from this experience is that the potential and intellect of Latino youth is extremely versatile. Those who I teamed with elevated our idea and took it to the next level with their analysis, wealth of knowledge and creativity.”

Standing backstage during the awards segment where students’ achievements were celebrated, one could not help to believe the future could not be any brighter. A popular topic of discussion during the weekend focused on the “raw aggregate brainpower” of the young Latinos gathered in San Antonio. Among these 600 young people are the next great intellectuals, genre-creating artists, scientific and business innovators, and the social and political leaders who will shape the future of the Latino community, the United States, Latin America and the world.

That’s right, it’s over.  Those chubby-fingered, sticky-faced little charlatans have reigned for far too long, and, like Gaddafi, their golden age is behind them.

Need Proof? Read on.

There was once a dark time when everywhere you turned, folks were clutching at their hair and shouting “Think of the children!” Whether this was about vaccinations, healthcare, education, or whether some parent was upset over the fact that I was wafting the smoke from my crack pipe toward their pride and joy, it seemed endless. In any event, children seemed to be quite the valuable commodity. We were encouraged not to step on them. Schools hired crossing guards. Everything was child-proofed, to the dismay of the elderly. We even got rid of dodge ball in schools.

Unbelievably, there were even yellow signs indicating that pint-sized royalty was, in fact, on board. Considering the fact that they are not income earners, El Guapo has always wondered why the little, drooling germ factories were so important.

But look around. Children have fallen — hard — and no one cares to kiss the boo boo.

• Across the country, restaurants are banning children. Increasingly, other establishment are offering kid-free shopping hours.

• Alabama, in an effort to target undocumented immigrants, has gone after undocumented students with no qualms whatsoever — causing an expected exodus from the state’s schools as families run and hide, children be damned.

• Those informative yellow signs that were once found on cars everywhere to clearly alert fellow drivers to go ahead and smash headlong into another, non-baby-carrying vehicle have gone the way of the suction-cup Garfields.  Our newfound hatred for children and lasagna-loving cats is undeniable.

• “Nearly 15 million children in the United States – 21% of all children – live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level – $22,050 a year for a family of four.” The gloves are off children. Fend for your damn selves you little wretches.  Oh, yes, you should score higher on that standardized test. And, no, no one cares you can’t concentrate because your stomach is growling loudly. You, my little snot-nosed friend, unlike the banks and auto-industry, are not too big to fail.

So, with every grade school now a militant “nut-free zone,” El Guapo has slathered neighborhood squirrels with peanut butter and trained them to attack anyone under four feet tall.

It’s open season on children. Don’t be left behind.

Your handsome and humble servant —

El Guapo

[photo by sazzadkhan2005]

It should come as no surprise that, in the wake of Alabama’s anti-Latino immigrant law, sentiments towards Latinos in that state are becoming less than civil. If it wasn’t something you expected would happen in wake of Alabama’s law — that Latinos, regardless of legal status, are being harassed — then you haven’t been paying attention.

We wrote a story previously about how the same thing happened in Georgia right around the time the anti-immigrant law there passed. Now the Associated Press reported:

Spanish-speaking parents say their children are facing more bullying and taunts at school since Alabama’s tough crackdown on illegal immigration took effect last month. Many blame the name-calling on fallout from the law, which has been widely covered in the news, discussed in some classrooms and debated around dinner tables.

Justice Department officials are monitoring for bullying incidents linked to the law.

If you give people a reason or an opportunity to openly harass Latinos, they’re going to do it. They did it in Georgia, where cops went “Hispanic hunting” and Puerto Ricans were being denied driver’s licenses. Despite trying to frame these issues as ones of “legality,” what ends up happening is that the lowest common denominator is adopted, and anyone who “looks illegal” is targeted.

That could be you, it could be me, it could be whoever someone in Alabama with opportunity and cause decides.

[Image Made With Mike Licht, WPclipart]

It was not unusual for me to be enrolled in night school when I attended East Los Angeles College. Classes would go until 10 p.m. and the student body’s groans would be more audible the further the clock hand would go away from 9:30 p.m. After class would adjourn for the night, I would race away in a huff in order to make the 9:45 bus back to my home. We would all shuffle into the bus and complain about the weather – whether it was too cold or even too hot. The bus drivers are always friendlier when they know that all you are trying to do is get home.

I remember one particular bus ride home. I got off the bus after the 20-minute bus ride and walked the last five blocks home. I kept myself company with the songs inside my Walkman. I was almost at my driveway when I had to stop because a police car decided to shine its lights on me. I took the headphones off my ears and listened to what they had to say. It felt awkward because it was the first time I had to deal with police officers. I had grown up with the notion that the cops were always right — even when they were wrong — so I took that knowledge to heart and into practice. They told me to stop from their built-in loudspeaker. I stopped and then they exited their car from a short distance. Then they began to ask me some questions.

Apparently they had been attempting to pull me over for a time, but thanks to my headphones I had ignored them completely.

They wanted to know where I was coming from, and they were somewhat dissatisfied by my answer — even though I was still wearing my backpack. They wanted to know what school was open that late at night. I told them that I was going to East Los Angeles College. The duo went into a Good Cop/Bad Cop routine. The Good Cop commended me on pursuing a higher education whole the Bad Cop remarked that community colleges were nothing more than discothèques with ashtrays.

My mother was waiting outside watering the lawn. She was holding the hose nervously demanding to know what I had done – as opposed to asking why the police were questioning me. The police wanted to know why she was outside watering the lawn, and I told them that she was waiting for me. They told her to remain where she was in English. I told them it was useless since she only spoke Spanish. The Bad Cop then told her, “No movear senora. Stay there alli.” My mother then went to turn off the water hose and watch helplessly from the porch with her arms crossed.

The Good Cop told her that they were just doing their job, and everything would be all right. I was waiting for the Bad Cop to tell me that I fit some kind of generic description. Instead he wanted to know what my gang affiliation was. I kind of laughed it off because I have always been a professional nerd. There is no gang that exists that would take me into their ranks. Even now, I am sure that even my bank is waiting for me to dip below some minimum balance.

The Bad Cop would not believe my answer, so he had me raise my shirt in order to find tattoos, but all the only incriminating evidence he found was my stretch marks. The Good Cop then thanked me for my time and they both entered their squad car and drove off. I could only wonder if those police officers are still getting some weird kicks from chasing down chubby Mexicans and making them squirm without their shirts on.

[Photo By Digitalshay]

When I taught high school in the Bronx, the library was the place you went when you didn’t want to eat lunch, and you didn’t want to answer questions about why you weren’t eating lunch. It was a place of solace and contemplation — a place where shushing was still prevalent, although you had to be careful because some of these kids were truly disturbed. The school I taught at was in a working-class neighborhood in the Bronx, so the library was adequate enough, but the numbers of classes to be serviced by the solitary librarian seemed almost like a punishment than collaboration. This is not to say that she was derelict in her duty; the librarian there did the best that she could with the limited resources that she had.

However, research conducted by Keith Curry Lance and Linda Hofschire in 2011 seems to indicate that schools with libraries fare better on standardized tests than schools with no libraries; furthermore, schools with visible library programs fare even better on standardized tests. Lance and Hofschire used data from the National Center for Education Statistics and looked at scores from 2004 to 2009; according to them, “states that gained librarians from 2004-5 to 2008-9 showed significantly greater improvements in fourth grade scores, an average of 2.2%. States that cut school librarians only saw a 1% increase.” This is important as a school’s API (Annual Percentage Increase) is a strong marker of its reputation and standing.

Recently, Senators Reed (D-RI) and Cochran (R-MS) have introduced legislation into Congress that will, according to the American Library Association, “help…improve student achievement by ensuring more students have access to effective school library programs.” The Strengthening Kids’ Interest in Learning and Libraries (SKILL) Act is designed to retain state-certified librarians, and implement library programs at schools with no library programs. There are several reasons why we want the SKILLS Act to pass in Congress as a country, but there are even more reasons to want this Act to pass if you are Latino and your child attends public middle or high school. For one thing, Latino students statistically access the internet though their smart phones, and don’t have broadband access at home.

If we want Latino students to not fall behind then it is essential that they have access to high-speed Internet; it’s not that dial-up doesn’t suit their needs — it’s just that the speed at which dial-up functions inhibits use of sophisticated programs and formats. So, for example, students might be able to access a search engine but not the website the engine recommends if the page runs Flash or has video capabilities. Much of the wonder of the internet involves multimedia features, so for example a website that has educational uses like YouTube would not be accessible to them. YouTube is dominated by personal videos people upload from their smart phones, but many universities, like M.I.T., use it to stream their lectures, on say Differential Equations. In addition, YouTube EDU has archived most of the TEDX lectures and has technical medical videos titled, Imaging Patients with Myleopathy.

American students need the guidance of librarians now more than ever. The landscape information inhabits has completely changed, and so has the main challenge. Librarians used to show people how to unearth the information they need; nowadays, because so many types of information are abundant and online, the librarians main duty has become to teach students how to discern between quality resources and biased information driven by commercial interests. Librarians now teach students how to withstand the torrent of information spewed at them when they use search engines and popular databases. In this age of information overdrive, librarians collaborating with teachers will only benefit students and specifically Latino students.

[Photo By Joe Crawford]

By Salomón Baldenegro

In Tea Party Republican Arizona, teaching Mexican American history is illegal because that history is purportedly “un-American” and foments the “overthrow of the government.”

The shamelessness of people who rally under the Confederate flag — a flag of treason, whose adherents renounced their U.S. citizenship, declared war on our country, and actually tried to overthrow our government! — claiming our history is “un-American” is breathtaking.

Let’s look at a few instructive snippets from scholars regarding this “subversive,” “un-American” history:

• Carole Christian documents how during WW I Mexican Americans enlisted in great numbers, urged on by Spanish-language newspapers that reported the “courage and sacrifice, sometimes of their lives,” of these soldiers.
• Raúl Morín describes the immense contributions and bravery of Mexican Americans during World War II and inKorea. One chapter details how “Company E, the All-Chicano Company,” whose members won many medals for bravery, was instrumental in winning several major battles.
• John Culhane writes of the courageous WW II-Korea exploits of 57 Mexican American young men who lived onSecond Street(“Hero Street”) in Silvis,Illinois, many of whom lost their lives and were awarded medals for bravery. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, this constituted “…the largest number of servicemen from the same ethnic group to come from any area of comparable size during these conflicts.”
• Ricardo Santillán’s “Rosita the Riveter” describes the contributions of Mexican American women who operated the factories, manufacturing ammunition and other war materiel during WW II.
• Christine Marín wrote about the Asociación de Madres y Esposas (Association of Mothers and Wives) who developed a network of “VictoryGardens” so that the country’s harvest could go to feed the troops, sold war bonds, collected and sold scrap metal, and picked cotton, donating the proceeds to the WW II war effort.
• Ralph Guzmán memorialized how Mexican Americans from southwestern states were 19.4% of Vietnam War fatalities but comprised only 10% of the population in those states.

Proportionately, Mexican Americans surpass all other ethnic groups with respect to the number of Congressional Medals of Honor earned for valor in combat.

After WW II, these patriotic men and women encountered “No Mexicans Allowed” signs in public places. Robert Oppenheimer describes a typical incident of a Mexican American WW II veteran, in his medal-decorated uniform, who was refused service in a restaurant. “White” cemeteries refused to bury Mexican American veterans.

Compare the decency of these patriots to the racism they faced: In Silvis, the home of Hero Street, Mexican American WW II veterans were not allowed to join the whites-only VFW chapter, but when the “white” VFW building was later razed and the members had no place to meet, the Mexican American chapter welcomed the displaced members to their chapter.

It is a perversion and a libel of monumental proportions to categorize the history detailed above — and similar historical dynamics regarding the immense economic, labor, cultural, political, educational, social, civil-rights, etc., contributions of Mexican Americans to our country — as “illegal” and “un-American.” Especially by people who rally under the treasonous Confederate flag.

Read Salomón Baldenegro’s previous essay on anti-ethnic studies activities in Arizona.

[Photo By Carissa GoodNCrazy]

By Dustin Mendus

Education has come to the forefront as a Latino issue in the past few weeks due to disappearing Latino students in Alabama. It’s raised eyebrows. The concerns about the American education system and Latino students are a huge issue that has gone unnoticed for too long. Immigration has been a big issue among the community, and immigration has been used by politicians as their way to get the attention of the Latino voters if they seek them.

While immigration is important, I can’t help but feel that we’ve neglected a domestic issue: our children’s education.

The appallingly slow decline of Latino dropout rates from high school (this does not include kids who go on to earn GEDs, just 16-24 year olds who have not earned a diploma or GED) has been a huge red flag since the 1980s. The National Center for Educational Statistics charts Hispanic dropout rates from the 1980s to 2009.

• In 1980, 35% of Hispanic students dropped out of high school.
• This percentage has gradually grew to 17.6% as of 2009.
• Compared to white, black, and Asian, dropout rates, Hispanics are a massive outlier: 5.2% of white students dropped out in 2009, 9.3% of black students, and 3.4% Asian students.
• Native American rates are another outlier, at 13.2%.

And we’re finally doing something about it. More scholarships? Programs to encourage kids to stay in school? No. A presidential advisory commission.

The White House states that the commission’s purpose is to “expand academic excellence and improving educational opportunities for Hispanics by providing advice to President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.” The swearing-in and meeting will be streaming on the White House website at 1:00 pm EST Thursday, and is made up mostly of professors and university employees from across the country, but generally from heavily Latino populated regions, a few school principles, as well as a very famous face, Shakira. Shakira seems like a strange choice, however, she’s a big philanthropist in education, helping build a school in her hometown of Barranquilla, Colombia, as well as being involved with UNICEF.

However great the star power behind a commission is, and whatever solutions that come out of it, there is one thing to keep in mind: time. Commissions don’t get things done overnight. Tomorrow’s events are not going to be debating and producing the answer to our problems now — that won’t come for days, months, maybe even years.

I’m only 21 and I’m no one to give parenting advice at this age or with this lack of experience, but the battle to provide Latino students with a proper education and a competitive edge that they are sorely lacking starts at home. Class might not teach what your son or daughter is interested in, but I urge you to get involved with your child, or children, and their educational lives. If you’re a teacher, help your students become interested in education. Reignite the fire of curiosity in children before they reach apathy and “make it by” with low grades, or simply drop out. Is your daughter interested in dinosaurs? Does your son love theater? Foster whatever it is. Their interest isn’t all they’ll learn in school, but with something they care about, they’ll have motivation to go to class and do their homework.

We don’t have the time to wait for bureaucratic solutions, unmotivated kids aren’t going to be in school when solutions reach Congress for a vote. Unmotivated kids are going to be adults on welfare struggling to survive when these solutions arrive.

Dustin Mendus is an undergraduate student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He focuses on cultural geography.

[Photo By Andres Arranz]