La Voz de Aztlan, November 26 1986
Item
Title
La Voz de Aztlan, November 26 1986
Creator
Associated Students of Fresno State
Relation
La Voz de Aztlan (Daily Collegian, California State University, Fresno)
Coverage
Fresno, California
Date
11/26/1986
Format
PDF
Identifier
SCUA_lvda_00167
extracted text
La Voz de Aztlan
California State University, Fresno
The Daily Collegian
Wednesday,Nov.26, 1986
Immigrant
rights
stifled
Herita~;e dance
Activist claims
discrimination
By Al Robles
Contributing Writer
Glenn Moore/The Daily Collegian
Los Danzantes Members Jacobo Silva and Stephanie Diaz performed in the Free Speech Area last Friday. They
performed as the Chicano/Latino Student Association ended its Chicano Education Week with Heritage Day.
Recent passage of the controversial
Simpson/ Rodino bill by Congres and
the question of immigrant and refugee
rights provided the focus of discussion in
prsentations Nov. 13 by immigrant rights
activist Cathy Tactaquin.
Sponsored on campus by M EChA and
the Department of Economics and at a
local church by the Fresno Frontline
Committee, the program examined the
various components of the bill, the forces
behind its pa~ ~ 1ge in congress, and the
history of anti-immigrant repression in
the United State, as well as current efforts
underway within the developing immigrant
rights movement.
In her opening comments, Tactaquin
said there was an amusing irony among
those who supported Simpson / Rodino's
passage. Some may have had Superman
as their childhood hero. The irony is that
Superman was himself an "alien," from
another planet, who had to falsify all
documentation regarding his existence
including his name, Clark Kent. But
because Superman was white, had blueish
hair and had a flashy costume rather than
black hair, brown skin and worn clothing,
he had an easier time getting a job as a
reporter and adapting to society.
The real world, she said, reveals a much
harsher existence for immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants, who are
the primary targets of the latest piece of
repressive legislation that is part of what
Tactaquin called the "Reagan Revolution."
The Simpson / Rodino bill has been
largely popularized in the media as an
"amnesty bill" dtie to a lot of attention
being focused around its legislative component. In order to become eligible for
legalization one must have proof of their
continued presence in the country since at
least 1982. Tactaquin maintains that most
undocumented immigrants cannot prove
such status. She said, "How many employers will admit to having knowingly
hired undocumented workers?"
Citing estimates that only about 70,000
immigrants would actually be legal, she
expressed a larger concern that this
See IMMIGRANT, page 6
New immigrants, new challenges
Editor's Note: This story is printed wilh the permission of
Dr. Cecilio Orozco, Bilingual Educalion Coordinator,
who obtained this story from its author.
By Samuel Betances
I eagerly embraced the question. There was .strong
reason to believe that history would be on the side of the·
proponents of bilingual education.
But it was not meant to be. The critics were correct. A
careful search of the historical record clearly indicates
that immigrants on the eve of the 20th century and before
did not have anything that can remotely be compared to
bilingual education in the educational diet. When the
critics argue that "my folks made it without bilingual
educa'ti'tin" they are correct!
·
As I pouted through the dnsty records of history and
the socto~economic political arena fa~ing the brave
newcomers of yesterday, however, I 1ealized that the
absence of bilingual education for that generation of
future Americans was related to something bigger than
just the language issue . The whole history of immigrant
education lay before me and I could now put the issues of
yesterday's newcomers in its proper perspe~tive.
Yes, it is true that the newcomers of yesterday did not
get bilingual education; but, that is because they did not
get any education . Entry into the .economic system was
possible without formal education. When the immigrants
came from Europe they did not need middle class English
skills and high school diplomas or college degrees to get
into the economy. Those brave souls, transplanted into
what they labeled as the "new world" came _with the
basics: strong backs and a willingness to work. •
When Swedes ran out of farmland on their native soil,
they came to the land which belonged to American
Indians and which, through conquest, became available
to these Scandinavian Lutherans. They transplanted
themselves into a terrain and geography not unlike the
one they left behind, and on the very day they arrived,
Swedes began to work. They could speak to those cows in
Swedish and the cows would give milk. Germans in
Pennsylvania could speak to the corn in German and it
would grow. In effect, the newcomers would have success
in the economy, build their homes, their centers of
worship, and, later on, schools were established. Several
generations would pass in the process. The society did not
need to build schools to prepare the first generation of
non-English speakers and their children for productive
lives in the ecor!omy. That generation confronted the cow
See BILINGUAL, page 6
La Voz deAztlan
page
Immigrant
Continued from page 5
provision mostly serves as a pretext for
massive deportations because it defines
eligibility.
The temporary legalization provision is
available to farmworkers who can prove
resident status from May I, 1985 to May
I, 1986. But in order to gain access to this
provision, one must remain locked into
field work for the next 7 years. Workers
will not be entitled to federal benefits such
as public housing, and will have limited
access to other benefits like welfare and
medicare. They also will not be able to
petition for relatives to join them in the
United States.
This aspect of the bill, Tactaquin stated,
places a racial and national stamp on
Mexican workers, will guarantee farmers
a "pool of cheap labor," and was the
subject of, not surprisingly, the intensive
lobbying efforts of the Western Growers
Association.
The third major component of the bill
was the subject of the longest running
controversy prior to its passage. This
section imposes sanct10ns against em-
Bilingual
Continued from page 5
and the corn. Today's newcomers
confront not the cow nor the corn; but
the computers.
While the generations of yesterday
could wait one, perhaps two, and even
three generations before their offspring
could enter high school and then college,
the newcomers of today have to leapfrog, from the agricultural period well
over the industrial period of strongbacked and willingness-to-work to the
age of information.
1vfost people who today sit on boards
of education, administer school programs and teach in the classrooms are
the third or fourth-generation descendants of immigrants. Their parents may
have earned a.high school diploma; but
their grandparents did not. The farther
back they go, the less formal schooling.
In fact, today's education professionals
represent, for the most part, the first
generation of college graduates in their
individual families. It's not accurate to
say "we made it without bilingual
education" .when history says that
public education did not exist at all or
simply did not figure in any significant
way in the progress of immigrants in an
economy that required, for the most
part, the strong ·backs, the farming
skills, the entrepreneural skills of
newcomers. America was built by nonEnglish speaking people, without formal education.
At the turn of the century the d_ropout
rate for everyone was about 94 percent
but there was no dropout problem.
Schools were irrelevant to the bulk of
newcomers. When schools did not
absorb the children of the immigrants,
to the degree that public schools existed
at all, the economy did.
The dropout is a problem only if the
lack of a diploma is combined with the
inability to get into the economy
without such certificates. The newcomer
of yesterday faced a large dropout rate
but a low dropout problem. Today, we
have a low dropout rate, about 30
percent overall , but
high dropout
problem. Why? Because to get into the .
economy, the workforce needs success
in high school and post-high school
education.
The newcomers of today come to the
U.S. with a strong back and a
willingnf!SS to work, with the same
intelligence of those farmers of old, but
at the wrong time. They cannot get into
the economy and expect a real future
for their children, in the age of
compµters, by growing corn and
milking cows. They cannot have success
in the economy until they have success
in schools. Latinos, along with the
a
ployers who knowingly hire undocumented
workers. Many congr~ssmen have acknowledged this part of the bill as extremely discriminatory and have enacted
certain amendments in an attempt to limit
this effect.
Tactaquin said this will establish discriminatory practice against foreign look.ing people regardless of their status. She
pointed out that it is having an immediate
impact on minority communities. Many
employers, s"he said, are already laying off
people they think may be undocumented,
including many who may be entitled to
legalization under the bill. It also may
provide an excuse for employers to lay off
workers.
The bill calls for a 50 percent increase of
the Immigration and Naturalization Services budget over the next three years.
This, she believes, will only serve to
increase the number of deportations and
do nothing to curb the abuses that occur.
Tactaquin also predicts that this will
also result in thousands more arrests of
Central American refugees fleeing the
violence in their respective homelands.
She-said they face death or imprisonment
if irviy return to their countries. Three
perc~nt of El Sal~ad~rian~ and G~atemalans currently 1mm1gratmg are given
asylum.
Another amendment of the bill, au thoAsians, Pacific Islanders and limited
English proficient groups, some native
to the soil of the Americas, must do
what no other group had to do before
in the ·history of American education:
attend middle class institutions, compete with mainstream classmates, and
achieve success in classes which transfer
infor.mafron~ in English.That's a tall
order. Knowing how to transfer information in English is a basic to such
expectations. As Moore and Pachon
wrote in Hispanics in the United
States:
"It is hard for some critics to understand
why other immigrant groups managed
without bilingual instruction. Actually,
arrivals did not manage. Young children
left school in such large numbers and at
such an early age that failure was
scarcely noticed. Furthermore, the
dropouts survived by fitting themselves
into a much less demanding economy.
A high school diploma is now a bare
minimum for many jobs. A wider range
of children are now expected to remain
in school - not just a chosen few from
upper income ·groups."
However, we must fall into the trap
of teaching Limited English Proficient
(LEP) students English at the expense
fo their education. That happened to
me. When I first went to public school
in New York City, I didn't know any
English and there were no programs to
help me u1,J.:i·stand what the teacher
was sayint, tv vur. rlass. So I would
look arounc! and ir.lltate ri1y c1ass1uat.es,
One day a teacher asked a question. !
heard the noise pregnant with the
meaning fill the classroom and looked
on to see the response of my classmates.
I was prepared to follow the lead of my
peers. Bursomethingstrange occurred.
I panicked as I witnessed only 50
· percent of the class raising their hands.
What was I to do? With which group
should l vote? 1 always tended to do
what the majority of the students did.
But I was trapped, since the response
was not very clear. I listened intensely
as the teacher made the same series of
noises, and I watched for the response.
This time about 60 percent of my
classmates raised their hands. And then
more. When about 80 percent responded with raised hands, I did so, mindful
· of !he fact that mine was hidden in the
masses of hands. My response to what I
could not understand was at least
keeping .pace with what everyone else
was doing.
I ran home. My feet pounded the
concrete sidewalk. I ran up the stairs of
my apartment building and I pushed
the door open. "Mamy, mamy," I asked,
" Que significa la palabra 'finish?' "
("Mom, mom, what does the word
'finish' mean?") She said , " Terminaste
la tarea, mi hijito?" (Did you finish
Wednesday,Nov.26, 1986
rized by Dan Lundgren on behalf of the
Western Growers' Association, will legalize
the discriminatory hiring of citizens over
legal residents. This amendment, according
to Tactaquin, will serve to stratify workers
in a caste like fashion.
The bill, she said , will takf': some time to
be implemented with most of tl~~ ;:r0visions taking effect in May.
Other national organizations such as
the NAACP and the AFL-CIO have
supported the bill to varying degrees
believing that jobs were being taken away.
Only recently did the AFL-CIO agree to
withdraw its support and currently maintains cautious opposition to the bill due to
its strike breaking impact.
The immediate tasks before the immigrant rights movement - mostly conThe bill's urigins go back to Ex-Presi- centrated in the work of Latino and Asian
dent Jimmy Carter's administration with organizations and among legal advocates
the Select Committee on Immigrant - involve community workshops to
Refugee Legislation. Reagan later added educate immigrants on certain protections
his own appointees to the committee under the law and efforts to force the INS
which initiated the Omnibus Immigration to inform people of their rights.
and Control Act, a version which congress
Tactaquin stated that the legal chalfound too repressive to pass: It was later lenges to the bill need to develop into a
altered into the Simpson/ Mazzolli bill in much broader political movement along
1982.
with the immigrant rights movement into
Tactaquin pointed out the rationale a national network.
begun by Reagan to rally public support
Other long term work, she said, must be
for the bill was that "America has lost done to raise the consciousness of the
control of its borders," and that "jobs are larger progressive movement on the history
being lost." Such ideological conditioning of United States relations with Mexico
had a1so affected several members in and Central American countries and to
congress, particularly among many who expose the racist, chauvinist, and antiinitially voted against earlier versions of working class agenda underlying the bill's
the bill. The only candidate in the last passage.
"The real solutions," she said, "rest in
presidential race who came out strongly
against the bill and tried to make it a the long term significance of the bill and
campaign issue was Jessie Jackson, she the implications that it hass for all
immigrant communities."
s;iid.
your task, my son?) So that's why only
50 percent only raised their hands, I
thought. Only 50 percent were finished!
I now understood what the teacher was
asking, and why the class responded as
they did.
That evening at the dinner table, I
noticed a long pause between the bites
by my older broth~r Charlie. I asked
him, "Charlie are you finished?" I felt
good about how quickly I put my new
vocabulary to work. I felt proud that I
knew what the word "finish" meant. I
now knew the word "finish," but I had
not finished my task. I was learning
English at the expense of my education.
Bilingual education is the process
whereby LEP students can learn English
and finish their ta~k. The issues are
separated to create a positive transition
of both empowering newcomers to the
language with new verbal skills; but
iearning, in the langµage they know,
the important curriculum tasks. Bilingual education is an important legitimate education reform for today's
vouth.
Bilingual ed1:1cation is the process
whereby LEP students can learn English
and finish their task. The issues are
separated to create a positive transition
of·both empowering newcomers to the
language with new verbal skills; but
learning, in the languag~ they know,
the important curriculum tasks. Bilingual education is an important legitimate education reform for today's
youth.
Bilingual education programs respond to the real problem of making
instruction understandable. Anyone
who argues that one can get along
without English in the U.S. is a fool!
English has replaced German as the
language of science and French as the
language of diplomacy. English is the
linguafranca of the world. The world's
· commerce largely takes place in international settings in English. When most
of the world studies a foreign language,
it tends to be English . That's reason
enough for us to insist t•hat newcomers
who come to the U.S. schools must
learn English. But there is even a more
powerful reason: English is the common
language of American citizens. It must
be taught, required, strengthened and
perfected in our schooling initiatives.
At their core, all bilingual educational
programs worth their salt aim to teach
English to LEP students. But, while
those LEP students are learning English
so they can learn in English , they can be
learning their math and science in the
language they know.
Monolinguals who have never had
!o learn a second language to compete
m a new and different environment
but who have an appreciation
history, know that the conditions facing
fo;
1
us on the eve of the 21st Century are
very different from conditions faced by
those who came on the eve of the 20th
century.
We must realize that not only do
these newcomers need our enlightened
policy; but we may go one step further.
Not only must these newcomers learn
English, it might be good if we didn't
move too quickly and tell them to
forget Spanish or Vietnamese, or
Chammorro, or T ogalo. Maybe we can
come of age and realize that we cannot,
in the name of turning out good
Americans, limit the freedom of speech
of those new to our shores and / or tell
people to forget what they know. In the
name of education, we cannot argue
that it is better to know less than more.
Bilingual education enriches our best
hopes for a democratic society, making
it safe for differences as well - power-·
ful, practical reasons why we need it
today; even though such programs did
not exist for yesterday's arrivals.
Samuel Be pnces is a professor of
Sociology ·at .Northeastern Illinois
University.
.MEChA meets
in statewide
conference
The largest statewide M EChA conference ·ever took place Nov. 4-5 at
Stanford University in Palo Alro.
More than 600 student activists attended
including members from CSUF, Fresno
City College and local high schools.
MEChA members at the conference
passed resolutions stating its statewide
support for the equal treatment of women,
expansion and retention of Chicano/ Latino.
Studies courses and solidarity with third
world student organizations. They also
stated M EChA 's opposition to the CSU
1988 requirement changes, the SimpsonRodino immigration reform bill, Proposition 63 (The English as the official state
language amendment) and the United
State's intervention in Central America.
The conference featured speeches by
the co-chairperson of'the United Farm
Workers Union , Dolores Huerta, the
governor of New Mexico , Toney Anaya,
and a represantative of the Watsonville
cannery strikers , Gloria Betancourt.
Along with represantative from black and
Asian student groups, all expressed the
need to create alliances with other organizations to build a powerful progressive
movement.
M EChA ( M ovimiento Estudiantil
Chicano de Aztlan) is a nationawide
Chicano student organization represented
from high schools thru universi,ties.
Wednesday,Nov.26,1986
La Voz de Aztlan
page
i
A silent protest for U.S. policy
By Bill Lerch
,
la Vaz Writer
•
A familiar scene every Wednesday is the
line of people silently protesting U.S.
policy in_Central America , particularly
funding of Nicaraguan Contras.
"By protesting we are excercising freedom of expression and our duties as
citizens. We don't want to be casualties of
the war," Jose Lopez said as he equated
U.S. policy in the Central American
country to the Vietnam War.
This protest, sponsered. by M EChA,
communicates to students that a problem
in Central America exists, and it involves
everyone.
Dr. Dale Bush, an economics professor
on campus also commented on the situation. "1 'm here for the same reason I
protested the Vietnam War"
He said that the situations today in
' Central America are reminders of a
mistake gone past. Students made a difference in h·is day, and he said they can
make a differepce today.
"This is how the protests to stop the war
in Vietnam started. First, only a few
protested; then hundreds protested, "Bush
said.
The protesters' main goal is to inform
students that the U.S. government represents not only a threat to the Central
American people but also to the sanctuary
of a sovereign nation.
Signs that read "Stop killing the
Nicaraguan People" and "Wake up
America. No More Vietnams,"implythat
the horrors of Vietnam lurk in our current
times.
"Basically we want the war to stop in Central America," said Mario H·uerta.
"Our goal is to restore peace in Central
American countries." The determination
t~_stqp death in the land connecting North
5 TV p
.
0
aupport
-For
t~rrori Sn,:
If)
[enfra I
Charles Fair Jr. is tired as he joins the protest against the United States' policies in Central America.
America and South America exists in the
silent protest.
The United States' involvement in•
Central America increases the chances of
young college-aged men fighting in
Central America. The circumstances of
the Vietnam War was to hault the spread
of communism just as is the case in
Nicaragua·.
"Just because communism is for self
determimttion doesn't make communism
bad," said Dr.- Robert Allison, an econo-"
Lawrence Tovar/La Vaz
Dale Chipman(left) debates with Campus Latin American Support Committee
Member Pat Young(right) over the history of the United States' involvement in the
Central American re~lon. The two debated at a recent protest held every
Wednesday '" the Free Speech Area and sponsered by MEChA and the Campus
Latin American Support Committee.
mies professor. "The Sandinista revolution in Central America is very popular
with the people down there." Allison lived
in Central America for almost a year. He
said that the Nicaraguan people are no
longer hungry and that they are happy
with the current government. "But Ronald
Reagan wants victory for the contras to
stop the ·popular Nicaraguan government."
"Ronald Reagan is the most uniformed
individual ever to hold the office of the
U .S presidency," commented Pat Young,
a member of the Campus Latin American
Support Committee. According to
Young, the United States is fighting against
what the Nicaraguan people want.
"l'wo out · of three people are for the
Sandinistas. They (the Nicaraguans) have
free education, medical care, and elections." In fact, Young who has been to
Nicaragua several times said that political
parties from the "far right to the extreme
left" participated in the last election.
According to Lopez, an organizer of the
protest, the Soviet Union js not directly
involved in Central America. "Reagan
wants to rally the ·people at home to
support the war cause." He said t_he
president uses the Red Wave of Communism to do so.
Lopez went on to say that Reagan is
"Red Baiting" by saying the Soviet Union
is directly involved in instigating the
revolution in Nicaragua.
"The Soviets Union is not direectly
involved with the revolution in Central
A~enca
Lawrence Tovar/la Yoz
America," Lopez said.
According to many in the protest the
United States is terrorizing the Nicaraguan
people by funding the Contras.
"We think it's morally wrong," said
Lopez. "The Reagan administration is
fund\ng genocide."
"It's a moral outrage," Bush said. "Any
American simply has to be outraged at
our governement."
But what atrocities are happening in the
eyes of the protesters?
"Reagan wants to attack civilian populations to destabilize the country for the
people to surrender," Lopez said.
''Over 10,000 Nicaraguan civilians tortured and raped by U.S. supported
contras," said one sign by the Latin
American Support Committee.
So, the protesters see .what they think,
but what do the onlookers think? Some of
the protesters speculated that.
"Why think about a war when .you can
go into the pit and talk to the frat boys?"
said Jeff Clark. Another protester, Steffen
Lovell said, "Students aren't sure what's
going on." He said people often walk by
and are puzzled.
Chris Dugan, a student from England,
hopes "People will think around the issue.
We want.to spread knowledge."
The protesters believe people are not
educated about Central America. They
say they want p·eople to be aware to make
a change before the United States enters;
into another Vietnam-like nightmare.
Chicano heritage: influenced by two cultures
By Robert Castorena
Contributing Writer
It appears that a new level of Chicano
consciousness is manifesting itself in
the 1980s as more Chicanos identify
themselves as Chicanos.
The Chicano does-not merely identify
himself because something inherently
within says, "you are a Chicano." No,
there are outside elements that constantly remind the Chicano of his
heritage. The Chicano experience is
influenced by the cultures of two
countries, the United States and Mexico, and is a synthesis of the two cultures.
Although the Chicano consciousness
has many characteristics similar to other
Latinos throughout the Americas,
particularly the Mexicano, the Chicano
consciousness has its own distinct and
unique charactcns~1•.;s.
To understand C!iica.no heri~:1ge ore .
Analysis
must look back into history. The birth
of Chicano consciousness occurred
when what is currently known as
Southwestern United States became a
part of the United States territories.
Before the United States-Mexican War
the territory was a part of Mexico, and
before Mexico gained its independence ·
from Spain it was a part of New Spain.
When the change from Mexico's to
the United States'government occurred
many conflicts arose between the governed and governors. Major differences existed. For example, the people's
culture and thinking processes were
influenced by the Catholic religion and
the Spanish language (the root of both
is found in Latin), but the thinking
processes of the people who governed
the region was molded by the protestant
religion and the English language (the
root of both is found in Anglo-Saxon).
The term Chicano is a variation of
\he word Mexicano. In Spanish the
letter X can be pronounced either like
the letter J or Ch. So the term Chicano
is Mexicano (Mechicano) less the Mewhich is appropriate since the Chicano
experience began, and its own heritage
started once the Southwest became a
part of the United States.
As the differences between the governed and governors became apparent,
inequalities against the Chicano 09- ·
curred in the socio-econo-political
processes. Therefore, society, as reflected by the government , began to oppress
the Chicano. The negative attitudes of
society toward the Chicano b·ecause of
differences caused the ·Chicano com-
munity to withdraw itself from Society.
In the 1940s and 50's, intellectuals
from the Chicano community began to
recognize the uniqueness of the Chicano
heritage. As they educated the Chicano
community, particularly university students, the commi,.mity asked for equality
which directly challenged the oppressive
conditions that existed.
When the request was denied the
Chicano community took action which
was considered unorthodox. Today
there is a tendency to view the Chicano
solely by what occurred in the 1960s
and early 1970s . This tendency occurs
because it was in the I960s and early
1970s the entire Chicano community
challenged the oppressive conditions .
The challenge was looked upon unfavorably .
From then until, 1980 there was a
See HERITAGE, page 8
Page
(o)oo
_ _ (Q)
_!:_T_7_~-~-'-'_____
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 1986
a ~oz ue z ,an
OPJNJON-----------
Co urt needs life
Like the U.S. government it is
modeled after, the CSU F Associatea
Students government has three
branches, each with a specific duty that
serves to prevent concentration of power
from falling into the hands of one
individual or group of individuals to
provide a balance between them.
The executive, legislative and judicial
branches are theoretically obstacles to
de potism, oligarchy and what
Alexander Hamilton called the "tyranny
of the majority."
o one person, despite his popularity
or ability to manipulate, can introduce
any legislation that usurps the power of
the other branches of government or
violate the constitution, the ultimate
source of laws and power in this
country.
Student government at Fresno State is
an excellent example of how this system
becomes unresponsive and oligarchical
when one of the branches is missing and
the constitution is ignored.
The student court of the A.S. has been
non-existent for several years. Its first
meeting was held last week. Without an
active Student Court, the door is open
for the executives and senators to act as t
. their own court and claim extraconstitutional power.
A.S. President Bob Whalen seems
unconcerned by this situation as his
recent actions have exemplified.
Constitutionally, the president has five
weeks from the beginnig of the semester
to make appointments to the student
court. Although there is only one justice
on the court, Ben Lau (an appointment
of last year's president Jeff Hansen),·
Whalen made no effort to activate the
court or appoint anyone until the
seventh week of school. This ignored not
only the constitution, but also Lau's plea
to get other members.
After it was discovered what Whalen
tried to do, the senate sent the matter to
the Personnel Committee in order to
complete membership of the court. I was
one of those approved and was also
approved by the senate l l-2. Whalen, in
his most obvious attempt to stifle the
power of the court, vetoed my
appointment
Hansen's actions last year are an
example of how an executive can claim
just about any power without a cou·rt
(and perhaps one of the reasons why
Whalen does not want the court).
After the senate spent 14 hours before
agreeing on the 1986-87 budget, Hansen
arbitrarily vetoed line items he did not
like - a power the president has never
had and can only get through a student
referendum. Three organizations Hansen
disagreed with politically were left out of
the budget. Whalen's obvious
Commentary
By Danny Chacon
antagonism towards such groups as the
Chicano-Latino Student Organization
(which he vetoed this semester) and
other progressive organizations leaves
little doubt that he would use such
powers in future budgets.
What if the A.S. president were not as
conservative as Whalen? What if the
president was a "radical activist" with
antagomsm towards the Inter Busi11ess
Council? Then perhaps Whalen would
be fighting for a Student Court. Clearly,
no one should be above the constitution.
Even if Whalen does not make any mo.re
abuses, he is setting a precedent for
future executives.
It is not so much the antagonism
Whalen may have towards the student
court nor is it his indifference to the
constitution is detrimental to
student government. The bad thing
about his attempt to curtail the court'is
how he has politicized it in the process.
Not only has it become a divisive issue
in the senate, but it has also set up
dangerous guidelines as to what an
acceptable political background is for a
justice.
Lau, a member of the Inter Business
Council which is the back bone of
Whalen's Reality Party, is an acceptable
member of the student court. Danny
Chacon, a Chicano activist, is not.
When Whalen vetoed my
·
appointment, he realized that the
majority of the senators who supported
me, was not enough to sustain a veto.
He therefore made a massive lobbying
effort to get me off, inviting senators
into his office telling them who knows
what. This put me into the position of
either defending myself and
compromising the dignity f the court, or
staying above the politics of student
government. l chose the latter.
Even though Whalen managed to
convince only Sen. Tim Jolly to make
the flip-flop and successfully sustain the
veto, 1 still believe I did the right thing.
I hav_e just learned that the Personnel
Commi'1ee appointed me as a justice
again. It will go back to the senate for
approval 'Jlnd subject to Whalen's veto,
of course. _J will not lobby the senators.
It is important that anyone with
knowledge of student government be
· appointed tl\is semester rather than
waiting until\January when Whalen will
have another five weeks to delay the
judicial branch of the A.S. government.
r
~-'
Heritage
Continued from page 7
limited movement toward equality;but
since 1981 there has been a reversal cf
that movement. There how exists •in
society an attitude which allows policies
to be instituted that are detrimental to
the Chicano. For example, both the
English only initiative ( Proposition 63),
and the immigration bill recently passed
by congress and approved by the
Pre.,sident are manifestations of society's
attitudes. It appears that the conservative elements in society are particularly paranoid, thinking for example
that Spa_n ish will be preferred over
English. What most fail to see is that
the Spanish language and culture has
always influenced the Southwestern
United States and is one of the region's
unique characteristics.
Again, it must be remembered that
before the Southwest became a part of
U.S . territories, Spanish culture was
firmly established and will continue to
influence the region primarily through
the Chicano.
Clearly the Chicano experience is
unique and positive despite attempts to
oppress him. The Chicano shoqld not
allow the current trend of negative
attitudes in society to affect his attitude.
The Chicano should continue to require
that real changes occur so that oppr.es-·
sive conditions are removed and movement toward true equality can begin
once again. More importantly, the
Chicano should continue to walk with
dignity and work diligently toward
these goals.
Little Man's 9ulture taken away from him
The dust settled behind me on the
distant junkyard. The legal slavery
toiled in the fields, blurred by the
stingy heat of the sun. An Oasis of
concrete and buried history loomed
up at the far end of the road.
The approaching town greeted me
with ·a decrept, "Get your used cars
here." It's real meaning said, "Get
yourself a second-hand culture here
fool."
Such a sign might be reasonably
sane in an immigrant's neighborhood,
but not in the colonized peoples'
homeland- whether defeated or not.
Someone is buying.
The salesman has sold and will
continue to sell.
· The first bag of goodies was filled
with his language; He clipped their
native tongues off. There were times
when the wrong language got its head
cut off. The man did very well.
,
Now there is a newer and improved
American Cancer:
An Opinion
By Guadalupe Tovar
model-model No. 63 .
How soon will it be before heads
start to roll again? Maybe it will be
the next law.
This newer hand-me-down culture
is making another divide and conquer
tr:ap. When you swallow some it will
· make you sick. And when it comes
back up it won't smell very good.
What a mess it will make.
It, like money is powerful. Money
breeds desire. No. 63 breeds anger.
Wallace Black Elk said, "Evil
thoughts, thoughts of hate are like
stones thrown at you by somebody
else. ;hey are not yours unle'-S you
take ont: and :\ck:10wieuge i~ with
your rr,outh. When you speai<. it.. it
then becomes yours."
Hey Little Man, the man knows
you. He knows your ego and your
need to feel big. He knows you're not
man enough to fight him. He knows
you ~re so naive that you will fight
your brother because you are not
educat~d enough to stand next to him
He thinks you are fearful of being a
"Trojan Horse" for fear of being a
sellout. He thinks you can't dress like
him and still keep your own identity.
He thinks you won't be able to keep
your thoughts separate from his
hogwash.
That is good salesmanship.
A good salesman has to believe in
his products. But the prod4cts are
clones that appear similar to him.
The clones don't know it, but they
are in the same boat. As America's
industry continues to move out they
are becoming a part of a new
developing nation. The Japaneese will
be their employer too.
They only see you Little Man.
He beleives you -do not join his
organization because you are
inferior__:_just as he has labeled you.
See how well the label works. It is
almost automatic. He hasn't said one
word. Your ideology is atken from his
brother. You are him.
Listen Little Man, you are
awesome. Thais why they try to keep
you down. They don't want to call
you Spanish because they want you
to be inferior.
Do you feel those rocks? They
named you well by accidentHispanic. You are his panic,someone
to fear.
Hey listen Little Man stand up and
. get counted. This is your homeland.
Don't stay excluded.
California State University, Fresno
The Daily Collegian
Wednesday,Nov.26, 1986
Immigrant
rights
stifled
Herita~;e dance
Activist claims
discrimination
By Al Robles
Contributing Writer
Glenn Moore/The Daily Collegian
Los Danzantes Members Jacobo Silva and Stephanie Diaz performed in the Free Speech Area last Friday. They
performed as the Chicano/Latino Student Association ended its Chicano Education Week with Heritage Day.
Recent passage of the controversial
Simpson/ Rodino bill by Congres and
the question of immigrant and refugee
rights provided the focus of discussion in
prsentations Nov. 13 by immigrant rights
activist Cathy Tactaquin.
Sponsored on campus by M EChA and
the Department of Economics and at a
local church by the Fresno Frontline
Committee, the program examined the
various components of the bill, the forces
behind its pa~ ~ 1ge in congress, and the
history of anti-immigrant repression in
the United State, as well as current efforts
underway within the developing immigrant
rights movement.
In her opening comments, Tactaquin
said there was an amusing irony among
those who supported Simpson / Rodino's
passage. Some may have had Superman
as their childhood hero. The irony is that
Superman was himself an "alien," from
another planet, who had to falsify all
documentation regarding his existence
including his name, Clark Kent. But
because Superman was white, had blueish
hair and had a flashy costume rather than
black hair, brown skin and worn clothing,
he had an easier time getting a job as a
reporter and adapting to society.
The real world, she said, reveals a much
harsher existence for immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants, who are
the primary targets of the latest piece of
repressive legislation that is part of what
Tactaquin called the "Reagan Revolution."
The Simpson / Rodino bill has been
largely popularized in the media as an
"amnesty bill" dtie to a lot of attention
being focused around its legislative component. In order to become eligible for
legalization one must have proof of their
continued presence in the country since at
least 1982. Tactaquin maintains that most
undocumented immigrants cannot prove
such status. She said, "How many employers will admit to having knowingly
hired undocumented workers?"
Citing estimates that only about 70,000
immigrants would actually be legal, she
expressed a larger concern that this
See IMMIGRANT, page 6
New immigrants, new challenges
Editor's Note: This story is printed wilh the permission of
Dr. Cecilio Orozco, Bilingual Educalion Coordinator,
who obtained this story from its author.
By Samuel Betances
I eagerly embraced the question. There was .strong
reason to believe that history would be on the side of the·
proponents of bilingual education.
But it was not meant to be. The critics were correct. A
careful search of the historical record clearly indicates
that immigrants on the eve of the 20th century and before
did not have anything that can remotely be compared to
bilingual education in the educational diet. When the
critics argue that "my folks made it without bilingual
educa'ti'tin" they are correct!
·
As I pouted through the dnsty records of history and
the socto~economic political arena fa~ing the brave
newcomers of yesterday, however, I 1ealized that the
absence of bilingual education for that generation of
future Americans was related to something bigger than
just the language issue . The whole history of immigrant
education lay before me and I could now put the issues of
yesterday's newcomers in its proper perspe~tive.
Yes, it is true that the newcomers of yesterday did not
get bilingual education; but, that is because they did not
get any education . Entry into the .economic system was
possible without formal education. When the immigrants
came from Europe they did not need middle class English
skills and high school diplomas or college degrees to get
into the economy. Those brave souls, transplanted into
what they labeled as the "new world" came _with the
basics: strong backs and a willingness to work. •
When Swedes ran out of farmland on their native soil,
they came to the land which belonged to American
Indians and which, through conquest, became available
to these Scandinavian Lutherans. They transplanted
themselves into a terrain and geography not unlike the
one they left behind, and on the very day they arrived,
Swedes began to work. They could speak to those cows in
Swedish and the cows would give milk. Germans in
Pennsylvania could speak to the corn in German and it
would grow. In effect, the newcomers would have success
in the economy, build their homes, their centers of
worship, and, later on, schools were established. Several
generations would pass in the process. The society did not
need to build schools to prepare the first generation of
non-English speakers and their children for productive
lives in the ecor!omy. That generation confronted the cow
See BILINGUAL, page 6
La Voz deAztlan
page
Immigrant
Continued from page 5
provision mostly serves as a pretext for
massive deportations because it defines
eligibility.
The temporary legalization provision is
available to farmworkers who can prove
resident status from May I, 1985 to May
I, 1986. But in order to gain access to this
provision, one must remain locked into
field work for the next 7 years. Workers
will not be entitled to federal benefits such
as public housing, and will have limited
access to other benefits like welfare and
medicare. They also will not be able to
petition for relatives to join them in the
United States.
This aspect of the bill, Tactaquin stated,
places a racial and national stamp on
Mexican workers, will guarantee farmers
a "pool of cheap labor," and was the
subject of, not surprisingly, the intensive
lobbying efforts of the Western Growers
Association.
The third major component of the bill
was the subject of the longest running
controversy prior to its passage. This
section imposes sanct10ns against em-
Bilingual
Continued from page 5
and the corn. Today's newcomers
confront not the cow nor the corn; but
the computers.
While the generations of yesterday
could wait one, perhaps two, and even
three generations before their offspring
could enter high school and then college,
the newcomers of today have to leapfrog, from the agricultural period well
over the industrial period of strongbacked and willingness-to-work to the
age of information.
1vfost people who today sit on boards
of education, administer school programs and teach in the classrooms are
the third or fourth-generation descendants of immigrants. Their parents may
have earned a.high school diploma; but
their grandparents did not. The farther
back they go, the less formal schooling.
In fact, today's education professionals
represent, for the most part, the first
generation of college graduates in their
individual families. It's not accurate to
say "we made it without bilingual
education" .when history says that
public education did not exist at all or
simply did not figure in any significant
way in the progress of immigrants in an
economy that required, for the most
part, the strong ·backs, the farming
skills, the entrepreneural skills of
newcomers. America was built by nonEnglish speaking people, without formal education.
At the turn of the century the d_ropout
rate for everyone was about 94 percent
but there was no dropout problem.
Schools were irrelevant to the bulk of
newcomers. When schools did not
absorb the children of the immigrants,
to the degree that public schools existed
at all, the economy did.
The dropout is a problem only if the
lack of a diploma is combined with the
inability to get into the economy
without such certificates. The newcomer
of yesterday faced a large dropout rate
but a low dropout problem. Today, we
have a low dropout rate, about 30
percent overall , but
high dropout
problem. Why? Because to get into the .
economy, the workforce needs success
in high school and post-high school
education.
The newcomers of today come to the
U.S. with a strong back and a
willingnf!SS to work, with the same
intelligence of those farmers of old, but
at the wrong time. They cannot get into
the economy and expect a real future
for their children, in the age of
compµters, by growing corn and
milking cows. They cannot have success
in the economy until they have success
in schools. Latinos, along with the
a
ployers who knowingly hire undocumented
workers. Many congr~ssmen have acknowledged this part of the bill as extremely discriminatory and have enacted
certain amendments in an attempt to limit
this effect.
Tactaquin said this will establish discriminatory practice against foreign look.ing people regardless of their status. She
pointed out that it is having an immediate
impact on minority communities. Many
employers, s"he said, are already laying off
people they think may be undocumented,
including many who may be entitled to
legalization under the bill. It also may
provide an excuse for employers to lay off
workers.
The bill calls for a 50 percent increase of
the Immigration and Naturalization Services budget over the next three years.
This, she believes, will only serve to
increase the number of deportations and
do nothing to curb the abuses that occur.
Tactaquin also predicts that this will
also result in thousands more arrests of
Central American refugees fleeing the
violence in their respective homelands.
She-said they face death or imprisonment
if irviy return to their countries. Three
perc~nt of El Sal~ad~rian~ and G~atemalans currently 1mm1gratmg are given
asylum.
Another amendment of the bill, au thoAsians, Pacific Islanders and limited
English proficient groups, some native
to the soil of the Americas, must do
what no other group had to do before
in the ·history of American education:
attend middle class institutions, compete with mainstream classmates, and
achieve success in classes which transfer
infor.mafron~ in English.That's a tall
order. Knowing how to transfer information in English is a basic to such
expectations. As Moore and Pachon
wrote in Hispanics in the United
States:
"It is hard for some critics to understand
why other immigrant groups managed
without bilingual instruction. Actually,
arrivals did not manage. Young children
left school in such large numbers and at
such an early age that failure was
scarcely noticed. Furthermore, the
dropouts survived by fitting themselves
into a much less demanding economy.
A high school diploma is now a bare
minimum for many jobs. A wider range
of children are now expected to remain
in school - not just a chosen few from
upper income ·groups."
However, we must fall into the trap
of teaching Limited English Proficient
(LEP) students English at the expense
fo their education. That happened to
me. When I first went to public school
in New York City, I didn't know any
English and there were no programs to
help me u1,J.:i·stand what the teacher
was sayint, tv vur. rlass. So I would
look arounc! and ir.lltate ri1y c1ass1uat.es,
One day a teacher asked a question. !
heard the noise pregnant with the
meaning fill the classroom and looked
on to see the response of my classmates.
I was prepared to follow the lead of my
peers. Bursomethingstrange occurred.
I panicked as I witnessed only 50
· percent of the class raising their hands.
What was I to do? With which group
should l vote? 1 always tended to do
what the majority of the students did.
But I was trapped, since the response
was not very clear. I listened intensely
as the teacher made the same series of
noises, and I watched for the response.
This time about 60 percent of my
classmates raised their hands. And then
more. When about 80 percent responded with raised hands, I did so, mindful
· of !he fact that mine was hidden in the
masses of hands. My response to what I
could not understand was at least
keeping .pace with what everyone else
was doing.
I ran home. My feet pounded the
concrete sidewalk. I ran up the stairs of
my apartment building and I pushed
the door open. "Mamy, mamy," I asked,
" Que significa la palabra 'finish?' "
("Mom, mom, what does the word
'finish' mean?") She said , " Terminaste
la tarea, mi hijito?" (Did you finish
Wednesday,Nov.26, 1986
rized by Dan Lundgren on behalf of the
Western Growers' Association, will legalize
the discriminatory hiring of citizens over
legal residents. This amendment, according
to Tactaquin, will serve to stratify workers
in a caste like fashion.
The bill, she said , will takf': some time to
be implemented with most of tl~~ ;:r0visions taking effect in May.
Other national organizations such as
the NAACP and the AFL-CIO have
supported the bill to varying degrees
believing that jobs were being taken away.
Only recently did the AFL-CIO agree to
withdraw its support and currently maintains cautious opposition to the bill due to
its strike breaking impact.
The immediate tasks before the immigrant rights movement - mostly conThe bill's urigins go back to Ex-Presi- centrated in the work of Latino and Asian
dent Jimmy Carter's administration with organizations and among legal advocates
the Select Committee on Immigrant - involve community workshops to
Refugee Legislation. Reagan later added educate immigrants on certain protections
his own appointees to the committee under the law and efforts to force the INS
which initiated the Omnibus Immigration to inform people of their rights.
and Control Act, a version which congress
Tactaquin stated that the legal chalfound too repressive to pass: It was later lenges to the bill need to develop into a
altered into the Simpson/ Mazzolli bill in much broader political movement along
1982.
with the immigrant rights movement into
Tactaquin pointed out the rationale a national network.
begun by Reagan to rally public support
Other long term work, she said, must be
for the bill was that "America has lost done to raise the consciousness of the
control of its borders," and that "jobs are larger progressive movement on the history
being lost." Such ideological conditioning of United States relations with Mexico
had a1so affected several members in and Central American countries and to
congress, particularly among many who expose the racist, chauvinist, and antiinitially voted against earlier versions of working class agenda underlying the bill's
the bill. The only candidate in the last passage.
"The real solutions," she said, "rest in
presidential race who came out strongly
against the bill and tried to make it a the long term significance of the bill and
campaign issue was Jessie Jackson, she the implications that it hass for all
immigrant communities."
s;iid.
your task, my son?) So that's why only
50 percent only raised their hands, I
thought. Only 50 percent were finished!
I now understood what the teacher was
asking, and why the class responded as
they did.
That evening at the dinner table, I
noticed a long pause between the bites
by my older broth~r Charlie. I asked
him, "Charlie are you finished?" I felt
good about how quickly I put my new
vocabulary to work. I felt proud that I
knew what the word "finish" meant. I
now knew the word "finish," but I had
not finished my task. I was learning
English at the expense of my education.
Bilingual education is the process
whereby LEP students can learn English
and finish their ta~k. The issues are
separated to create a positive transition
of both empowering newcomers to the
language with new verbal skills; but
iearning, in the langµage they know,
the important curriculum tasks. Bilingual education is an important legitimate education reform for today's
vouth.
Bilingual ed1:1cation is the process
whereby LEP students can learn English
and finish their task. The issues are
separated to create a positive transition
of·both empowering newcomers to the
language with new verbal skills; but
learning, in the languag~ they know,
the important curriculum tasks. Bilingual education is an important legitimate education reform for today's
youth.
Bilingual education programs respond to the real problem of making
instruction understandable. Anyone
who argues that one can get along
without English in the U.S. is a fool!
English has replaced German as the
language of science and French as the
language of diplomacy. English is the
linguafranca of the world. The world's
· commerce largely takes place in international settings in English. When most
of the world studies a foreign language,
it tends to be English . That's reason
enough for us to insist t•hat newcomers
who come to the U.S. schools must
learn English. But there is even a more
powerful reason: English is the common
language of American citizens. It must
be taught, required, strengthened and
perfected in our schooling initiatives.
At their core, all bilingual educational
programs worth their salt aim to teach
English to LEP students. But, while
those LEP students are learning English
so they can learn in English , they can be
learning their math and science in the
language they know.
Monolinguals who have never had
!o learn a second language to compete
m a new and different environment
but who have an appreciation
history, know that the conditions facing
fo;
1
us on the eve of the 21st Century are
very different from conditions faced by
those who came on the eve of the 20th
century.
We must realize that not only do
these newcomers need our enlightened
policy; but we may go one step further.
Not only must these newcomers learn
English, it might be good if we didn't
move too quickly and tell them to
forget Spanish or Vietnamese, or
Chammorro, or T ogalo. Maybe we can
come of age and realize that we cannot,
in the name of turning out good
Americans, limit the freedom of speech
of those new to our shores and / or tell
people to forget what they know. In the
name of education, we cannot argue
that it is better to know less than more.
Bilingual education enriches our best
hopes for a democratic society, making
it safe for differences as well - power-·
ful, practical reasons why we need it
today; even though such programs did
not exist for yesterday's arrivals.
Samuel Be pnces is a professor of
Sociology ·at .Northeastern Illinois
University.
.MEChA meets
in statewide
conference
The largest statewide M EChA conference ·ever took place Nov. 4-5 at
Stanford University in Palo Alro.
More than 600 student activists attended
including members from CSUF, Fresno
City College and local high schools.
MEChA members at the conference
passed resolutions stating its statewide
support for the equal treatment of women,
expansion and retention of Chicano/ Latino.
Studies courses and solidarity with third
world student organizations. They also
stated M EChA 's opposition to the CSU
1988 requirement changes, the SimpsonRodino immigration reform bill, Proposition 63 (The English as the official state
language amendment) and the United
State's intervention in Central America.
The conference featured speeches by
the co-chairperson of'the United Farm
Workers Union , Dolores Huerta, the
governor of New Mexico , Toney Anaya,
and a represantative of the Watsonville
cannery strikers , Gloria Betancourt.
Along with represantative from black and
Asian student groups, all expressed the
need to create alliances with other organizations to build a powerful progressive
movement.
M EChA ( M ovimiento Estudiantil
Chicano de Aztlan) is a nationawide
Chicano student organization represented
from high schools thru universi,ties.
Wednesday,Nov.26,1986
La Voz de Aztlan
page
i
A silent protest for U.S. policy
By Bill Lerch
,
la Vaz Writer
•
A familiar scene every Wednesday is the
line of people silently protesting U.S.
policy in_Central America , particularly
funding of Nicaraguan Contras.
"By protesting we are excercising freedom of expression and our duties as
citizens. We don't want to be casualties of
the war," Jose Lopez said as he equated
U.S. policy in the Central American
country to the Vietnam War.
This protest, sponsered. by M EChA,
communicates to students that a problem
in Central America exists, and it involves
everyone.
Dr. Dale Bush, an economics professor
on campus also commented on the situation. "1 'm here for the same reason I
protested the Vietnam War"
He said that the situations today in
' Central America are reminders of a
mistake gone past. Students made a difference in h·is day, and he said they can
make a differepce today.
"This is how the protests to stop the war
in Vietnam started. First, only a few
protested; then hundreds protested, "Bush
said.
The protesters' main goal is to inform
students that the U.S. government represents not only a threat to the Central
American people but also to the sanctuary
of a sovereign nation.
Signs that read "Stop killing the
Nicaraguan People" and "Wake up
America. No More Vietnams,"implythat
the horrors of Vietnam lurk in our current
times.
"Basically we want the war to stop in Central America," said Mario H·uerta.
"Our goal is to restore peace in Central
American countries." The determination
t~_stqp death in the land connecting North
5 TV p
.
0
aupport
-For
t~rrori Sn,:
If)
[enfra I
Charles Fair Jr. is tired as he joins the protest against the United States' policies in Central America.
America and South America exists in the
silent protest.
The United States' involvement in•
Central America increases the chances of
young college-aged men fighting in
Central America. The circumstances of
the Vietnam War was to hault the spread
of communism just as is the case in
Nicaragua·.
"Just because communism is for self
determimttion doesn't make communism
bad," said Dr.- Robert Allison, an econo-"
Lawrence Tovar/La Vaz
Dale Chipman(left) debates with Campus Latin American Support Committee
Member Pat Young(right) over the history of the United States' involvement in the
Central American re~lon. The two debated at a recent protest held every
Wednesday '" the Free Speech Area and sponsered by MEChA and the Campus
Latin American Support Committee.
mies professor. "The Sandinista revolution in Central America is very popular
with the people down there." Allison lived
in Central America for almost a year. He
said that the Nicaraguan people are no
longer hungry and that they are happy
with the current government. "But Ronald
Reagan wants victory for the contras to
stop the ·popular Nicaraguan government."
"Ronald Reagan is the most uniformed
individual ever to hold the office of the
U .S presidency," commented Pat Young,
a member of the Campus Latin American
Support Committee. According to
Young, the United States is fighting against
what the Nicaraguan people want.
"l'wo out · of three people are for the
Sandinistas. They (the Nicaraguans) have
free education, medical care, and elections." In fact, Young who has been to
Nicaragua several times said that political
parties from the "far right to the extreme
left" participated in the last election.
According to Lopez, an organizer of the
protest, the Soviet Union js not directly
involved in Central America. "Reagan
wants to rally the ·people at home to
support the war cause." He said t_he
president uses the Red Wave of Communism to do so.
Lopez went on to say that Reagan is
"Red Baiting" by saying the Soviet Union
is directly involved in instigating the
revolution in Nicaragua.
"The Soviets Union is not direectly
involved with the revolution in Central
A~enca
Lawrence Tovar/la Yoz
America," Lopez said.
According to many in the protest the
United States is terrorizing the Nicaraguan
people by funding the Contras.
"We think it's morally wrong," said
Lopez. "The Reagan administration is
fund\ng genocide."
"It's a moral outrage," Bush said. "Any
American simply has to be outraged at
our governement."
But what atrocities are happening in the
eyes of the protesters?
"Reagan wants to attack civilian populations to destabilize the country for the
people to surrender," Lopez said.
''Over 10,000 Nicaraguan civilians tortured and raped by U.S. supported
contras," said one sign by the Latin
American Support Committee.
So, the protesters see .what they think,
but what do the onlookers think? Some of
the protesters speculated that.
"Why think about a war when .you can
go into the pit and talk to the frat boys?"
said Jeff Clark. Another protester, Steffen
Lovell said, "Students aren't sure what's
going on." He said people often walk by
and are puzzled.
Chris Dugan, a student from England,
hopes "People will think around the issue.
We want.to spread knowledge."
The protesters believe people are not
educated about Central America. They
say they want p·eople to be aware to make
a change before the United States enters;
into another Vietnam-like nightmare.
Chicano heritage: influenced by two cultures
By Robert Castorena
Contributing Writer
It appears that a new level of Chicano
consciousness is manifesting itself in
the 1980s as more Chicanos identify
themselves as Chicanos.
The Chicano does-not merely identify
himself because something inherently
within says, "you are a Chicano." No,
there are outside elements that constantly remind the Chicano of his
heritage. The Chicano experience is
influenced by the cultures of two
countries, the United States and Mexico, and is a synthesis of the two cultures.
Although the Chicano consciousness
has many characteristics similar to other
Latinos throughout the Americas,
particularly the Mexicano, the Chicano
consciousness has its own distinct and
unique charactcns~1•.;s.
To understand C!iica.no heri~:1ge ore .
Analysis
must look back into history. The birth
of Chicano consciousness occurred
when what is currently known as
Southwestern United States became a
part of the United States territories.
Before the United States-Mexican War
the territory was a part of Mexico, and
before Mexico gained its independence ·
from Spain it was a part of New Spain.
When the change from Mexico's to
the United States'government occurred
many conflicts arose between the governed and governors. Major differences existed. For example, the people's
culture and thinking processes were
influenced by the Catholic religion and
the Spanish language (the root of both
is found in Latin), but the thinking
processes of the people who governed
the region was molded by the protestant
religion and the English language (the
root of both is found in Anglo-Saxon).
The term Chicano is a variation of
\he word Mexicano. In Spanish the
letter X can be pronounced either like
the letter J or Ch. So the term Chicano
is Mexicano (Mechicano) less the Mewhich is appropriate since the Chicano
experience began, and its own heritage
started once the Southwest became a
part of the United States.
As the differences between the governed and governors became apparent,
inequalities against the Chicano 09- ·
curred in the socio-econo-political
processes. Therefore, society, as reflected by the government , began to oppress
the Chicano. The negative attitudes of
society toward the Chicano b·ecause of
differences caused the ·Chicano com-
munity to withdraw itself from Society.
In the 1940s and 50's, intellectuals
from the Chicano community began to
recognize the uniqueness of the Chicano
heritage. As they educated the Chicano
community, particularly university students, the commi,.mity asked for equality
which directly challenged the oppressive
conditions that existed.
When the request was denied the
Chicano community took action which
was considered unorthodox. Today
there is a tendency to view the Chicano
solely by what occurred in the 1960s
and early 1970s . This tendency occurs
because it was in the I960s and early
1970s the entire Chicano community
challenged the oppressive conditions .
The challenge was looked upon unfavorably .
From then until, 1980 there was a
See HERITAGE, page 8
Page
(o)oo
_ _ (Q)
_!:_T_7_~-~-'-'_____
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 1986
a ~oz ue z ,an
OPJNJON-----------
Co urt needs life
Like the U.S. government it is
modeled after, the CSU F Associatea
Students government has three
branches, each with a specific duty that
serves to prevent concentration of power
from falling into the hands of one
individual or group of individuals to
provide a balance between them.
The executive, legislative and judicial
branches are theoretically obstacles to
de potism, oligarchy and what
Alexander Hamilton called the "tyranny
of the majority."
o one person, despite his popularity
or ability to manipulate, can introduce
any legislation that usurps the power of
the other branches of government or
violate the constitution, the ultimate
source of laws and power in this
country.
Student government at Fresno State is
an excellent example of how this system
becomes unresponsive and oligarchical
when one of the branches is missing and
the constitution is ignored.
The student court of the A.S. has been
non-existent for several years. Its first
meeting was held last week. Without an
active Student Court, the door is open
for the executives and senators to act as t
. their own court and claim extraconstitutional power.
A.S. President Bob Whalen seems
unconcerned by this situation as his
recent actions have exemplified.
Constitutionally, the president has five
weeks from the beginnig of the semester
to make appointments to the student
court. Although there is only one justice
on the court, Ben Lau (an appointment
of last year's president Jeff Hansen),·
Whalen made no effort to activate the
court or appoint anyone until the
seventh week of school. This ignored not
only the constitution, but also Lau's plea
to get other members.
After it was discovered what Whalen
tried to do, the senate sent the matter to
the Personnel Committee in order to
complete membership of the court. I was
one of those approved and was also
approved by the senate l l-2. Whalen, in
his most obvious attempt to stifle the
power of the court, vetoed my
appointment
Hansen's actions last year are an
example of how an executive can claim
just about any power without a cou·rt
(and perhaps one of the reasons why
Whalen does not want the court).
After the senate spent 14 hours before
agreeing on the 1986-87 budget, Hansen
arbitrarily vetoed line items he did not
like - a power the president has never
had and can only get through a student
referendum. Three organizations Hansen
disagreed with politically were left out of
the budget. Whalen's obvious
Commentary
By Danny Chacon
antagonism towards such groups as the
Chicano-Latino Student Organization
(which he vetoed this semester) and
other progressive organizations leaves
little doubt that he would use such
powers in future budgets.
What if the A.S. president were not as
conservative as Whalen? What if the
president was a "radical activist" with
antagomsm towards the Inter Busi11ess
Council? Then perhaps Whalen would
be fighting for a Student Court. Clearly,
no one should be above the constitution.
Even if Whalen does not make any mo.re
abuses, he is setting a precedent for
future executives.
It is not so much the antagonism
Whalen may have towards the student
court nor is it his indifference to the
constitution is detrimental to
student government. The bad thing
about his attempt to curtail the court'is
how he has politicized it in the process.
Not only has it become a divisive issue
in the senate, but it has also set up
dangerous guidelines as to what an
acceptable political background is for a
justice.
Lau, a member of the Inter Business
Council which is the back bone of
Whalen's Reality Party, is an acceptable
member of the student court. Danny
Chacon, a Chicano activist, is not.
When Whalen vetoed my
·
appointment, he realized that the
majority of the senators who supported
me, was not enough to sustain a veto.
He therefore made a massive lobbying
effort to get me off, inviting senators
into his office telling them who knows
what. This put me into the position of
either defending myself and
compromising the dignity f the court, or
staying above the politics of student
government. l chose the latter.
Even though Whalen managed to
convince only Sen. Tim Jolly to make
the flip-flop and successfully sustain the
veto, 1 still believe I did the right thing.
I hav_e just learned that the Personnel
Commi'1ee appointed me as a justice
again. It will go back to the senate for
approval 'Jlnd subject to Whalen's veto,
of course. _J will not lobby the senators.
It is important that anyone with
knowledge of student government be
· appointed tl\is semester rather than
waiting until\January when Whalen will
have another five weeks to delay the
judicial branch of the A.S. government.
r
~-'
Heritage
Continued from page 7
limited movement toward equality;but
since 1981 there has been a reversal cf
that movement. There how exists •in
society an attitude which allows policies
to be instituted that are detrimental to
the Chicano. For example, both the
English only initiative ( Proposition 63),
and the immigration bill recently passed
by congress and approved by the
Pre.,sident are manifestations of society's
attitudes. It appears that the conservative elements in society are particularly paranoid, thinking for example
that Spa_n ish will be preferred over
English. What most fail to see is that
the Spanish language and culture has
always influenced the Southwestern
United States and is one of the region's
unique characteristics.
Again, it must be remembered that
before the Southwest became a part of
U.S . territories, Spanish culture was
firmly established and will continue to
influence the region primarily through
the Chicano.
Clearly the Chicano experience is
unique and positive despite attempts to
oppress him. The Chicano shoqld not
allow the current trend of negative
attitudes in society to affect his attitude.
The Chicano should continue to require
that real changes occur so that oppr.es-·
sive conditions are removed and movement toward true equality can begin
once again. More importantly, the
Chicano should continue to walk with
dignity and work diligently toward
these goals.
Little Man's 9ulture taken away from him
The dust settled behind me on the
distant junkyard. The legal slavery
toiled in the fields, blurred by the
stingy heat of the sun. An Oasis of
concrete and buried history loomed
up at the far end of the road.
The approaching town greeted me
with ·a decrept, "Get your used cars
here." It's real meaning said, "Get
yourself a second-hand culture here
fool."
Such a sign might be reasonably
sane in an immigrant's neighborhood,
but not in the colonized peoples'
homeland- whether defeated or not.
Someone is buying.
The salesman has sold and will
continue to sell.
· The first bag of goodies was filled
with his language; He clipped their
native tongues off. There were times
when the wrong language got its head
cut off. The man did very well.
,
Now there is a newer and improved
American Cancer:
An Opinion
By Guadalupe Tovar
model-model No. 63 .
How soon will it be before heads
start to roll again? Maybe it will be
the next law.
This newer hand-me-down culture
is making another divide and conquer
tr:ap. When you swallow some it will
· make you sick. And when it comes
back up it won't smell very good.
What a mess it will make.
It, like money is powerful. Money
breeds desire. No. 63 breeds anger.
Wallace Black Elk said, "Evil
thoughts, thoughts of hate are like
stones thrown at you by somebody
else. ;hey are not yours unle'-S you
take ont: and :\ck:10wieuge i~ with
your rr,outh. When you speai<. it.. it
then becomes yours."
Hey Little Man, the man knows
you. He knows your ego and your
need to feel big. He knows you're not
man enough to fight him. He knows
you ~re so naive that you will fight
your brother because you are not
educat~d enough to stand next to him
He thinks you are fearful of being a
"Trojan Horse" for fear of being a
sellout. He thinks you can't dress like
him and still keep your own identity.
He thinks you won't be able to keep
your thoughts separate from his
hogwash.
That is good salesmanship.
A good salesman has to believe in
his products. But the prod4cts are
clones that appear similar to him.
The clones don't know it, but they
are in the same boat. As America's
industry continues to move out they
are becoming a part of a new
developing nation. The Japaneese will
be their employer too.
They only see you Little Man.
He beleives you -do not join his
organization because you are
inferior__:_just as he has labeled you.
See how well the label works. It is
almost automatic. He hasn't said one
word. Your ideology is atken from his
brother. You are him.
Listen Little Man, you are
awesome. Thais why they try to keep
you down. They don't want to call
you Spanish because they want you
to be inferior.
Do you feel those rocks? They
named you well by accidentHispanic. You are his panic,someone
to fear.
Hey listen Little Man stand up and
. get counted. This is your homeland.
Don't stay excluded.
La Voz de Aztlan
California State University, Fresno
The Daily Collegian
Wednesday,Nov.26, 1986
Immigrant
rights
stifled
Herita~;e dance
Activist claims
discrimination
By Al Robles
Contributing Writer
Glenn Moore/The Daily Collegian
Los Danzantes Members Jacobo Silva and Stephanie Diaz performed in the Free Speech Area last Friday. They
performed as the Chicano/Latino Student Association ended its Chicano Education Week with Heritage Day.
Recent passage of the controversial
Simpson/ Rodino bill by Congres and
the question of immigrant and refugee
rights provided the focus of discussion in
prsentations Nov. 13 by immigrant rights
activist Cathy Tactaquin.
Sponsored on campus by M EChA and
the Department of Economics and at a
local church by the Fresno Frontline
Committee, the program examined the
various components of the bill, the forces
behind its pa~ ~ 1ge in congress, and the
history of anti-immigrant repression in
the United State, as well as current efforts
underway within the developing immigrant
rights movement.
In her opening comments, Tactaquin
said there was an amusing irony among
those who supported Simpson / Rodino's
passage. Some may have had Superman
as their childhood hero. The irony is that
Superman was himself an "alien," from
another planet, who had to falsify all
documentation regarding his existence
including his name, Clark Kent. But
because Superman was white, had blueish
hair and had a flashy costume rather than
black hair, brown skin and worn clothing,
he had an easier time getting a job as a
reporter and adapting to society.
The real world, she said, reveals a much
harsher existence for immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants, who are
the primary targets of the latest piece of
repressive legislation that is part of what
Tactaquin called the "Reagan Revolution."
The Simpson / Rodino bill has been
largely popularized in the media as an
"amnesty bill" dtie to a lot of attention
being focused around its legislative component. In order to become eligible for
legalization one must have proof of their
continued presence in the country since at
least 1982. Tactaquin maintains that most
undocumented immigrants cannot prove
such status. She said, "How many employers will admit to having knowingly
hired undocumented workers?"
Citing estimates that only about 70,000
immigrants would actually be legal, she
expressed a larger concern that this
See IMMIGRANT, page 6
New immigrants, new challenges
Editor's Note: This story is printed wilh the permission of
Dr. Cecilio Orozco, Bilingual Educalion Coordinator,
who obtained this story from its author.
By Samuel Betances
I eagerly embraced the question. There was .strong
reason to believe that history would be on the side of the·
proponents of bilingual education.
But it was not meant to be. The critics were correct. A
careful search of the historical record clearly indicates
that immigrants on the eve of the 20th century and before
did not have anything that can remotely be compared to
bilingual education in the educational diet. When the
critics argue that "my folks made it without bilingual
educa'ti'tin" they are correct!
·
As I pouted through the dnsty records of history and
the socto~economic political arena fa~ing the brave
newcomers of yesterday, however, I 1ealized that the
absence of bilingual education for that generation of
future Americans was related to something bigger than
just the language issue . The whole history of immigrant
education lay before me and I could now put the issues of
yesterday's newcomers in its proper perspe~tive.
Yes, it is true that the newcomers of yesterday did not
get bilingual education; but, that is because they did not
get any education . Entry into the .economic system was
possible without formal education. When the immigrants
came from Europe they did not need middle class English
skills and high school diplomas or college degrees to get
into the economy. Those brave souls, transplanted into
what they labeled as the "new world" came _with the
basics: strong backs and a willingness to work. •
When Swedes ran out of farmland on their native soil,
they came to the land which belonged to American
Indians and which, through conquest, became available
to these Scandinavian Lutherans. They transplanted
themselves into a terrain and geography not unlike the
one they left behind, and on the very day they arrived,
Swedes began to work. They could speak to those cows in
Swedish and the cows would give milk. Germans in
Pennsylvania could speak to the corn in German and it
would grow. In effect, the newcomers would have success
in the economy, build their homes, their centers of
worship, and, later on, schools were established. Several
generations would pass in the process. The society did not
need to build schools to prepare the first generation of
non-English speakers and their children for productive
lives in the ecor!omy. That generation confronted the cow
See BILINGUAL, page 6
La Voz deAztlan
page
Immigrant
Continued from page 5
provision mostly serves as a pretext for
massive deportations because it defines
eligibility.
The temporary legalization provision is
available to farmworkers who can prove
resident status from May I, 1985 to May
I, 1986. But in order to gain access to this
provision, one must remain locked into
field work for the next 7 years. Workers
will not be entitled to federal benefits such
as public housing, and will have limited
access to other benefits like welfare and
medicare. They also will not be able to
petition for relatives to join them in the
United States.
This aspect of the bill, Tactaquin stated,
places a racial and national stamp on
Mexican workers, will guarantee farmers
a "pool of cheap labor," and was the
subject of, not surprisingly, the intensive
lobbying efforts of the Western Growers
Association.
The third major component of the bill
was the subject of the longest running
controversy prior to its passage. This
section imposes sanct10ns against em-
Bilingual
Continued from page 5
and the corn. Today's newcomers
confront not the cow nor the corn; but
the computers.
While the generations of yesterday
could wait one, perhaps two, and even
three generations before their offspring
could enter high school and then college,
the newcomers of today have to leapfrog, from the agricultural period well
over the industrial period of strongbacked and willingness-to-work to the
age of information.
1vfost people who today sit on boards
of education, administer school programs and teach in the classrooms are
the third or fourth-generation descendants of immigrants. Their parents may
have earned a.high school diploma; but
their grandparents did not. The farther
back they go, the less formal schooling.
In fact, today's education professionals
represent, for the most part, the first
generation of college graduates in their
individual families. It's not accurate to
say "we made it without bilingual
education" .when history says that
public education did not exist at all or
simply did not figure in any significant
way in the progress of immigrants in an
economy that required, for the most
part, the strong ·backs, the farming
skills, the entrepreneural skills of
newcomers. America was built by nonEnglish speaking people, without formal education.
At the turn of the century the d_ropout
rate for everyone was about 94 percent
but there was no dropout problem.
Schools were irrelevant to the bulk of
newcomers. When schools did not
absorb the children of the immigrants,
to the degree that public schools existed
at all, the economy did.
The dropout is a problem only if the
lack of a diploma is combined with the
inability to get into the economy
without such certificates. The newcomer
of yesterday faced a large dropout rate
but a low dropout problem. Today, we
have a low dropout rate, about 30
percent overall , but
high dropout
problem. Why? Because to get into the .
economy, the workforce needs success
in high school and post-high school
education.
The newcomers of today come to the
U.S. with a strong back and a
willingnf!SS to work, with the same
intelligence of those farmers of old, but
at the wrong time. They cannot get into
the economy and expect a real future
for their children, in the age of
compµters, by growing corn and
milking cows. They cannot have success
in the economy until they have success
in schools. Latinos, along with the
a
ployers who knowingly hire undocumented
workers. Many congr~ssmen have acknowledged this part of the bill as extremely discriminatory and have enacted
certain amendments in an attempt to limit
this effect.
Tactaquin said this will establish discriminatory practice against foreign look.ing people regardless of their status. She
pointed out that it is having an immediate
impact on minority communities. Many
employers, s"he said, are already laying off
people they think may be undocumented,
including many who may be entitled to
legalization under the bill. It also may
provide an excuse for employers to lay off
workers.
The bill calls for a 50 percent increase of
the Immigration and Naturalization Services budget over the next three years.
This, she believes, will only serve to
increase the number of deportations and
do nothing to curb the abuses that occur.
Tactaquin also predicts that this will
also result in thousands more arrests of
Central American refugees fleeing the
violence in their respective homelands.
She-said they face death or imprisonment
if irviy return to their countries. Three
perc~nt of El Sal~ad~rian~ and G~atemalans currently 1mm1gratmg are given
asylum.
Another amendment of the bill, au thoAsians, Pacific Islanders and limited
English proficient groups, some native
to the soil of the Americas, must do
what no other group had to do before
in the ·history of American education:
attend middle class institutions, compete with mainstream classmates, and
achieve success in classes which transfer
infor.mafron~ in English.That's a tall
order. Knowing how to transfer information in English is a basic to such
expectations. As Moore and Pachon
wrote in Hispanics in the United
States:
"It is hard for some critics to understand
why other immigrant groups managed
without bilingual instruction. Actually,
arrivals did not manage. Young children
left school in such large numbers and at
such an early age that failure was
scarcely noticed. Furthermore, the
dropouts survived by fitting themselves
into a much less demanding economy.
A high school diploma is now a bare
minimum for many jobs. A wider range
of children are now expected to remain
in school - not just a chosen few from
upper income ·groups."
However, we must fall into the trap
of teaching Limited English Proficient
(LEP) students English at the expense
fo their education. That happened to
me. When I first went to public school
in New York City, I didn't know any
English and there were no programs to
help me u1,J.:i·stand what the teacher
was sayint, tv vur. rlass. So I would
look arounc! and ir.lltate ri1y c1ass1uat.es,
One day a teacher asked a question. !
heard the noise pregnant with the
meaning fill the classroom and looked
on to see the response of my classmates.
I was prepared to follow the lead of my
peers. Bursomethingstrange occurred.
I panicked as I witnessed only 50
· percent of the class raising their hands.
What was I to do? With which group
should l vote? 1 always tended to do
what the majority of the students did.
But I was trapped, since the response
was not very clear. I listened intensely
as the teacher made the same series of
noises, and I watched for the response.
This time about 60 percent of my
classmates raised their hands. And then
more. When about 80 percent responded with raised hands, I did so, mindful
· of !he fact that mine was hidden in the
masses of hands. My response to what I
could not understand was at least
keeping .pace with what everyone else
was doing.
I ran home. My feet pounded the
concrete sidewalk. I ran up the stairs of
my apartment building and I pushed
the door open. "Mamy, mamy," I asked,
" Que significa la palabra 'finish?' "
("Mom, mom, what does the word
'finish' mean?") She said , " Terminaste
la tarea, mi hijito?" (Did you finish
Wednesday,Nov.26, 1986
rized by Dan Lundgren on behalf of the
Western Growers' Association, will legalize
the discriminatory hiring of citizens over
legal residents. This amendment, according
to Tactaquin, will serve to stratify workers
in a caste like fashion.
The bill, she said , will takf': some time to
be implemented with most of tl~~ ;:r0visions taking effect in May.
Other national organizations such as
the NAACP and the AFL-CIO have
supported the bill to varying degrees
believing that jobs were being taken away.
Only recently did the AFL-CIO agree to
withdraw its support and currently maintains cautious opposition to the bill due to
its strike breaking impact.
The immediate tasks before the immigrant rights movement - mostly conThe bill's urigins go back to Ex-Presi- centrated in the work of Latino and Asian
dent Jimmy Carter's administration with organizations and among legal advocates
the Select Committee on Immigrant - involve community workshops to
Refugee Legislation. Reagan later added educate immigrants on certain protections
his own appointees to the committee under the law and efforts to force the INS
which initiated the Omnibus Immigration to inform people of their rights.
and Control Act, a version which congress
Tactaquin stated that the legal chalfound too repressive to pass: It was later lenges to the bill need to develop into a
altered into the Simpson/ Mazzolli bill in much broader political movement along
1982.
with the immigrant rights movement into
Tactaquin pointed out the rationale a national network.
begun by Reagan to rally public support
Other long term work, she said, must be
for the bill was that "America has lost done to raise the consciousness of the
control of its borders," and that "jobs are larger progressive movement on the history
being lost." Such ideological conditioning of United States relations with Mexico
had a1so affected several members in and Central American countries and to
congress, particularly among many who expose the racist, chauvinist, and antiinitially voted against earlier versions of working class agenda underlying the bill's
the bill. The only candidate in the last passage.
"The real solutions," she said, "rest in
presidential race who came out strongly
against the bill and tried to make it a the long term significance of the bill and
campaign issue was Jessie Jackson, she the implications that it hass for all
immigrant communities."
s;iid.
your task, my son?) So that's why only
50 percent only raised their hands, I
thought. Only 50 percent were finished!
I now understood what the teacher was
asking, and why the class responded as
they did.
That evening at the dinner table, I
noticed a long pause between the bites
by my older broth~r Charlie. I asked
him, "Charlie are you finished?" I felt
good about how quickly I put my new
vocabulary to work. I felt proud that I
knew what the word "finish" meant. I
now knew the word "finish," but I had
not finished my task. I was learning
English at the expense of my education.
Bilingual education is the process
whereby LEP students can learn English
and finish their ta~k. The issues are
separated to create a positive transition
of both empowering newcomers to the
language with new verbal skills; but
iearning, in the langµage they know,
the important curriculum tasks. Bilingual education is an important legitimate education reform for today's
vouth.
Bilingual ed1:1cation is the process
whereby LEP students can learn English
and finish their task. The issues are
separated to create a positive transition
of·both empowering newcomers to the
language with new verbal skills; but
learning, in the languag~ they know,
the important curriculum tasks. Bilingual education is an important legitimate education reform for today's
youth.
Bilingual education programs respond to the real problem of making
instruction understandable. Anyone
who argues that one can get along
without English in the U.S. is a fool!
English has replaced German as the
language of science and French as the
language of diplomacy. English is the
linguafranca of the world. The world's
· commerce largely takes place in international settings in English. When most
of the world studies a foreign language,
it tends to be English . That's reason
enough for us to insist t•hat newcomers
who come to the U.S. schools must
learn English. But there is even a more
powerful reason: English is the common
language of American citizens. It must
be taught, required, strengthened and
perfected in our schooling initiatives.
At their core, all bilingual educational
programs worth their salt aim to teach
English to LEP students. But, while
those LEP students are learning English
so they can learn in English , they can be
learning their math and science in the
language they know.
Monolinguals who have never had
!o learn a second language to compete
m a new and different environment
but who have an appreciation
history, know that the conditions facing
fo;
1
us on the eve of the 21st Century are
very different from conditions faced by
those who came on the eve of the 20th
century.
We must realize that not only do
these newcomers need our enlightened
policy; but we may go one step further.
Not only must these newcomers learn
English, it might be good if we didn't
move too quickly and tell them to
forget Spanish or Vietnamese, or
Chammorro, or T ogalo. Maybe we can
come of age and realize that we cannot,
in the name of turning out good
Americans, limit the freedom of speech
of those new to our shores and / or tell
people to forget what they know. In the
name of education, we cannot argue
that it is better to know less than more.
Bilingual education enriches our best
hopes for a democratic society, making
it safe for differences as well - power-·
ful, practical reasons why we need it
today; even though such programs did
not exist for yesterday's arrivals.
Samuel Be pnces is a professor of
Sociology ·at .Northeastern Illinois
University.
.MEChA meets
in statewide
conference
The largest statewide M EChA conference ·ever took place Nov. 4-5 at
Stanford University in Palo Alro.
More than 600 student activists attended
including members from CSUF, Fresno
City College and local high schools.
MEChA members at the conference
passed resolutions stating its statewide
support for the equal treatment of women,
expansion and retention of Chicano/ Latino.
Studies courses and solidarity with third
world student organizations. They also
stated M EChA 's opposition to the CSU
1988 requirement changes, the SimpsonRodino immigration reform bill, Proposition 63 (The English as the official state
language amendment) and the United
State's intervention in Central America.
The conference featured speeches by
the co-chairperson of'the United Farm
Workers Union , Dolores Huerta, the
governor of New Mexico , Toney Anaya,
and a represantative of the Watsonville
cannery strikers , Gloria Betancourt.
Along with represantative from black and
Asian student groups, all expressed the
need to create alliances with other organizations to build a powerful progressive
movement.
M EChA ( M ovimiento Estudiantil
Chicano de Aztlan) is a nationawide
Chicano student organization represented
from high schools thru universi,ties.
Wednesday,Nov.26,1986
La Voz de Aztlan
page
i
A silent protest for U.S. policy
By Bill Lerch
,
la Vaz Writer
•
A familiar scene every Wednesday is the
line of people silently protesting U.S.
policy in_Central America , particularly
funding of Nicaraguan Contras.
"By protesting we are excercising freedom of expression and our duties as
citizens. We don't want to be casualties of
the war," Jose Lopez said as he equated
U.S. policy in the Central American
country to the Vietnam War.
This protest, sponsered. by M EChA,
communicates to students that a problem
in Central America exists, and it involves
everyone.
Dr. Dale Bush, an economics professor
on campus also commented on the situation. "1 'm here for the same reason I
protested the Vietnam War"
He said that the situations today in
' Central America are reminders of a
mistake gone past. Students made a difference in h·is day, and he said they can
make a differepce today.
"This is how the protests to stop the war
in Vietnam started. First, only a few
protested; then hundreds protested, "Bush
said.
The protesters' main goal is to inform
students that the U.S. government represents not only a threat to the Central
American people but also to the sanctuary
of a sovereign nation.
Signs that read "Stop killing the
Nicaraguan People" and "Wake up
America. No More Vietnams,"implythat
the horrors of Vietnam lurk in our current
times.
"Basically we want the war to stop in Central America," said Mario H·uerta.
"Our goal is to restore peace in Central
American countries." The determination
t~_stqp death in the land connecting North
5 TV p
.
0
aupport
-For
t~rrori Sn,:
If)
[enfra I
Charles Fair Jr. is tired as he joins the protest against the United States' policies in Central America.
America and South America exists in the
silent protest.
The United States' involvement in•
Central America increases the chances of
young college-aged men fighting in
Central America. The circumstances of
the Vietnam War was to hault the spread
of communism just as is the case in
Nicaragua·.
"Just because communism is for self
determimttion doesn't make communism
bad," said Dr.- Robert Allison, an econo-"
Lawrence Tovar/La Vaz
Dale Chipman(left) debates with Campus Latin American Support Committee
Member Pat Young(right) over the history of the United States' involvement in the
Central American re~lon. The two debated at a recent protest held every
Wednesday '" the Free Speech Area and sponsered by MEChA and the Campus
Latin American Support Committee.
mies professor. "The Sandinista revolution in Central America is very popular
with the people down there." Allison lived
in Central America for almost a year. He
said that the Nicaraguan people are no
longer hungry and that they are happy
with the current government. "But Ronald
Reagan wants victory for the contras to
stop the ·popular Nicaraguan government."
"Ronald Reagan is the most uniformed
individual ever to hold the office of the
U .S presidency," commented Pat Young,
a member of the Campus Latin American
Support Committee. According to
Young, the United States is fighting against
what the Nicaraguan people want.
"l'wo out · of three people are for the
Sandinistas. They (the Nicaraguans) have
free education, medical care, and elections." In fact, Young who has been to
Nicaragua several times said that political
parties from the "far right to the extreme
left" participated in the last election.
According to Lopez, an organizer of the
protest, the Soviet Union js not directly
involved in Central America. "Reagan
wants to rally the ·people at home to
support the war cause." He said t_he
president uses the Red Wave of Communism to do so.
Lopez went on to say that Reagan is
"Red Baiting" by saying the Soviet Union
is directly involved in instigating the
revolution in Nicaragua.
"The Soviets Union is not direectly
involved with the revolution in Central
A~enca
Lawrence Tovar/la Yoz
America," Lopez said.
According to many in the protest the
United States is terrorizing the Nicaraguan
people by funding the Contras.
"We think it's morally wrong," said
Lopez. "The Reagan administration is
fund\ng genocide."
"It's a moral outrage," Bush said. "Any
American simply has to be outraged at
our governement."
But what atrocities are happening in the
eyes of the protesters?
"Reagan wants to attack civilian populations to destabilize the country for the
people to surrender," Lopez said.
''Over 10,000 Nicaraguan civilians tortured and raped by U.S. supported
contras," said one sign by the Latin
American Support Committee.
So, the protesters see .what they think,
but what do the onlookers think? Some of
the protesters speculated that.
"Why think about a war when .you can
go into the pit and talk to the frat boys?"
said Jeff Clark. Another protester, Steffen
Lovell said, "Students aren't sure what's
going on." He said people often walk by
and are puzzled.
Chris Dugan, a student from England,
hopes "People will think around the issue.
We want.to spread knowledge."
The protesters believe people are not
educated about Central America. They
say they want p·eople to be aware to make
a change before the United States enters;
into another Vietnam-like nightmare.
Chicano heritage: influenced by two cultures
By Robert Castorena
Contributing Writer
It appears that a new level of Chicano
consciousness is manifesting itself in
the 1980s as more Chicanos identify
themselves as Chicanos.
The Chicano does-not merely identify
himself because something inherently
within says, "you are a Chicano." No,
there are outside elements that constantly remind the Chicano of his
heritage. The Chicano experience is
influenced by the cultures of two
countries, the United States and Mexico, and is a synthesis of the two cultures.
Although the Chicano consciousness
has many characteristics similar to other
Latinos throughout the Americas,
particularly the Mexicano, the Chicano
consciousness has its own distinct and
unique charactcns~1•.;s.
To understand C!iica.no heri~:1ge ore .
Analysis
must look back into history. The birth
of Chicano consciousness occurred
when what is currently known as
Southwestern United States became a
part of the United States territories.
Before the United States-Mexican War
the territory was a part of Mexico, and
before Mexico gained its independence ·
from Spain it was a part of New Spain.
When the change from Mexico's to
the United States'government occurred
many conflicts arose between the governed and governors. Major differences existed. For example, the people's
culture and thinking processes were
influenced by the Catholic religion and
the Spanish language (the root of both
is found in Latin), but the thinking
processes of the people who governed
the region was molded by the protestant
religion and the English language (the
root of both is found in Anglo-Saxon).
The term Chicano is a variation of
\he word Mexicano. In Spanish the
letter X can be pronounced either like
the letter J or Ch. So the term Chicano
is Mexicano (Mechicano) less the Mewhich is appropriate since the Chicano
experience began, and its own heritage
started once the Southwest became a
part of the United States.
As the differences between the governed and governors became apparent,
inequalities against the Chicano 09- ·
curred in the socio-econo-political
processes. Therefore, society, as reflected by the government , began to oppress
the Chicano. The negative attitudes of
society toward the Chicano b·ecause of
differences caused the ·Chicano com-
munity to withdraw itself from Society.
In the 1940s and 50's, intellectuals
from the Chicano community began to
recognize the uniqueness of the Chicano
heritage. As they educated the Chicano
community, particularly university students, the commi,.mity asked for equality
which directly challenged the oppressive
conditions that existed.
When the request was denied the
Chicano community took action which
was considered unorthodox. Today
there is a tendency to view the Chicano
solely by what occurred in the 1960s
and early 1970s . This tendency occurs
because it was in the I960s and early
1970s the entire Chicano community
challenged the oppressive conditions .
The challenge was looked upon unfavorably .
From then until, 1980 there was a
See HERITAGE, page 8
Page
(o)oo
_ _ (Q)
_!:_T_7_~-~-'-'_____
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 1986
a ~oz ue z ,an
OPJNJON-----------
Co urt needs life
Like the U.S. government it is
modeled after, the CSU F Associatea
Students government has three
branches, each with a specific duty that
serves to prevent concentration of power
from falling into the hands of one
individual or group of individuals to
provide a balance between them.
The executive, legislative and judicial
branches are theoretically obstacles to
de potism, oligarchy and what
Alexander Hamilton called the "tyranny
of the majority."
o one person, despite his popularity
or ability to manipulate, can introduce
any legislation that usurps the power of
the other branches of government or
violate the constitution, the ultimate
source of laws and power in this
country.
Student government at Fresno State is
an excellent example of how this system
becomes unresponsive and oligarchical
when one of the branches is missing and
the constitution is ignored.
The student court of the A.S. has been
non-existent for several years. Its first
meeting was held last week. Without an
active Student Court, the door is open
for the executives and senators to act as t
. their own court and claim extraconstitutional power.
A.S. President Bob Whalen seems
unconcerned by this situation as his
recent actions have exemplified.
Constitutionally, the president has five
weeks from the beginnig of the semester
to make appointments to the student
court. Although there is only one justice
on the court, Ben Lau (an appointment
of last year's president Jeff Hansen),·
Whalen made no effort to activate the
court or appoint anyone until the
seventh week of school. This ignored not
only the constitution, but also Lau's plea
to get other members.
After it was discovered what Whalen
tried to do, the senate sent the matter to
the Personnel Committee in order to
complete membership of the court. I was
one of those approved and was also
approved by the senate l l-2. Whalen, in
his most obvious attempt to stifle the
power of the court, vetoed my
appointment
Hansen's actions last year are an
example of how an executive can claim
just about any power without a cou·rt
(and perhaps one of the reasons why
Whalen does not want the court).
After the senate spent 14 hours before
agreeing on the 1986-87 budget, Hansen
arbitrarily vetoed line items he did not
like - a power the president has never
had and can only get through a student
referendum. Three organizations Hansen
disagreed with politically were left out of
the budget. Whalen's obvious
Commentary
By Danny Chacon
antagonism towards such groups as the
Chicano-Latino Student Organization
(which he vetoed this semester) and
other progressive organizations leaves
little doubt that he would use such
powers in future budgets.
What if the A.S. president were not as
conservative as Whalen? What if the
president was a "radical activist" with
antagomsm towards the Inter Busi11ess
Council? Then perhaps Whalen would
be fighting for a Student Court. Clearly,
no one should be above the constitution.
Even if Whalen does not make any mo.re
abuses, he is setting a precedent for
future executives.
It is not so much the antagonism
Whalen may have towards the student
court nor is it his indifference to the
constitution is detrimental to
student government. The bad thing
about his attempt to curtail the court'is
how he has politicized it in the process.
Not only has it become a divisive issue
in the senate, but it has also set up
dangerous guidelines as to what an
acceptable political background is for a
justice.
Lau, a member of the Inter Business
Council which is the back bone of
Whalen's Reality Party, is an acceptable
member of the student court. Danny
Chacon, a Chicano activist, is not.
When Whalen vetoed my
·
appointment, he realized that the
majority of the senators who supported
me, was not enough to sustain a veto.
He therefore made a massive lobbying
effort to get me off, inviting senators
into his office telling them who knows
what. This put me into the position of
either defending myself and
compromising the dignity f the court, or
staying above the politics of student
government. l chose the latter.
Even though Whalen managed to
convince only Sen. Tim Jolly to make
the flip-flop and successfully sustain the
veto, 1 still believe I did the right thing.
I hav_e just learned that the Personnel
Commi'1ee appointed me as a justice
again. It will go back to the senate for
approval 'Jlnd subject to Whalen's veto,
of course. _J will not lobby the senators.
It is important that anyone with
knowledge of student government be
· appointed tl\is semester rather than
waiting until\January when Whalen will
have another five weeks to delay the
judicial branch of the A.S. government.
r
~-'
Heritage
Continued from page 7
limited movement toward equality;but
since 1981 there has been a reversal cf
that movement. There how exists •in
society an attitude which allows policies
to be instituted that are detrimental to
the Chicano. For example, both the
English only initiative ( Proposition 63),
and the immigration bill recently passed
by congress and approved by the
Pre.,sident are manifestations of society's
attitudes. It appears that the conservative elements in society are particularly paranoid, thinking for example
that Spa_n ish will be preferred over
English. What most fail to see is that
the Spanish language and culture has
always influenced the Southwestern
United States and is one of the region's
unique characteristics.
Again, it must be remembered that
before the Southwest became a part of
U.S . territories, Spanish culture was
firmly established and will continue to
influence the region primarily through
the Chicano.
Clearly the Chicano experience is
unique and positive despite attempts to
oppress him. The Chicano shoqld not
allow the current trend of negative
attitudes in society to affect his attitude.
The Chicano should continue to require
that real changes occur so that oppr.es-·
sive conditions are removed and movement toward true equality can begin
once again. More importantly, the
Chicano should continue to walk with
dignity and work diligently toward
these goals.
Little Man's 9ulture taken away from him
The dust settled behind me on the
distant junkyard. The legal slavery
toiled in the fields, blurred by the
stingy heat of the sun. An Oasis of
concrete and buried history loomed
up at the far end of the road.
The approaching town greeted me
with ·a decrept, "Get your used cars
here." It's real meaning said, "Get
yourself a second-hand culture here
fool."
Such a sign might be reasonably
sane in an immigrant's neighborhood,
but not in the colonized peoples'
homeland- whether defeated or not.
Someone is buying.
The salesman has sold and will
continue to sell.
· The first bag of goodies was filled
with his language; He clipped their
native tongues off. There were times
when the wrong language got its head
cut off. The man did very well.
,
Now there is a newer and improved
American Cancer:
An Opinion
By Guadalupe Tovar
model-model No. 63 .
How soon will it be before heads
start to roll again? Maybe it will be
the next law.
This newer hand-me-down culture
is making another divide and conquer
tr:ap. When you swallow some it will
· make you sick. And when it comes
back up it won't smell very good.
What a mess it will make.
It, like money is powerful. Money
breeds desire. No. 63 breeds anger.
Wallace Black Elk said, "Evil
thoughts, thoughts of hate are like
stones thrown at you by somebody
else. ;hey are not yours unle'-S you
take ont: and :\ck:10wieuge i~ with
your rr,outh. When you speai<. it.. it
then becomes yours."
Hey Little Man, the man knows
you. He knows your ego and your
need to feel big. He knows you're not
man enough to fight him. He knows
you ~re so naive that you will fight
your brother because you are not
educat~d enough to stand next to him
He thinks you are fearful of being a
"Trojan Horse" for fear of being a
sellout. He thinks you can't dress like
him and still keep your own identity.
He thinks you won't be able to keep
your thoughts separate from his
hogwash.
That is good salesmanship.
A good salesman has to believe in
his products. But the prod4cts are
clones that appear similar to him.
The clones don't know it, but they
are in the same boat. As America's
industry continues to move out they
are becoming a part of a new
developing nation. The Japaneese will
be their employer too.
They only see you Little Man.
He beleives you -do not join his
organization because you are
inferior__:_just as he has labeled you.
See how well the label works. It is
almost automatic. He hasn't said one
word. Your ideology is atken from his
brother. You are him.
Listen Little Man, you are
awesome. Thais why they try to keep
you down. They don't want to call
you Spanish because they want you
to be inferior.
Do you feel those rocks? They
named you well by accidentHispanic. You are his panic,someone
to fear.
Hey listen Little Man stand up and
. get counted. This is your homeland.
Don't stay excluded.
California State University, Fresno
The Daily Collegian
Wednesday,Nov.26, 1986
Immigrant
rights
stifled
Herita~;e dance
Activist claims
discrimination
By Al Robles
Contributing Writer
Glenn Moore/The Daily Collegian
Los Danzantes Members Jacobo Silva and Stephanie Diaz performed in the Free Speech Area last Friday. They
performed as the Chicano/Latino Student Association ended its Chicano Education Week with Heritage Day.
Recent passage of the controversial
Simpson/ Rodino bill by Congres and
the question of immigrant and refugee
rights provided the focus of discussion in
prsentations Nov. 13 by immigrant rights
activist Cathy Tactaquin.
Sponsored on campus by M EChA and
the Department of Economics and at a
local church by the Fresno Frontline
Committee, the program examined the
various components of the bill, the forces
behind its pa~ ~ 1ge in congress, and the
history of anti-immigrant repression in
the United State, as well as current efforts
underway within the developing immigrant
rights movement.
In her opening comments, Tactaquin
said there was an amusing irony among
those who supported Simpson / Rodino's
passage. Some may have had Superman
as their childhood hero. The irony is that
Superman was himself an "alien," from
another planet, who had to falsify all
documentation regarding his existence
including his name, Clark Kent. But
because Superman was white, had blueish
hair and had a flashy costume rather than
black hair, brown skin and worn clothing,
he had an easier time getting a job as a
reporter and adapting to society.
The real world, she said, reveals a much
harsher existence for immigrants, particularly undocumented immigrants, who are
the primary targets of the latest piece of
repressive legislation that is part of what
Tactaquin called the "Reagan Revolution."
The Simpson / Rodino bill has been
largely popularized in the media as an
"amnesty bill" dtie to a lot of attention
being focused around its legislative component. In order to become eligible for
legalization one must have proof of their
continued presence in the country since at
least 1982. Tactaquin maintains that most
undocumented immigrants cannot prove
such status. She said, "How many employers will admit to having knowingly
hired undocumented workers?"
Citing estimates that only about 70,000
immigrants would actually be legal, she
expressed a larger concern that this
See IMMIGRANT, page 6
New immigrants, new challenges
Editor's Note: This story is printed wilh the permission of
Dr. Cecilio Orozco, Bilingual Educalion Coordinator,
who obtained this story from its author.
By Samuel Betances
I eagerly embraced the question. There was .strong
reason to believe that history would be on the side of the·
proponents of bilingual education.
But it was not meant to be. The critics were correct. A
careful search of the historical record clearly indicates
that immigrants on the eve of the 20th century and before
did not have anything that can remotely be compared to
bilingual education in the educational diet. When the
critics argue that "my folks made it without bilingual
educa'ti'tin" they are correct!
·
As I pouted through the dnsty records of history and
the socto~economic political arena fa~ing the brave
newcomers of yesterday, however, I 1ealized that the
absence of bilingual education for that generation of
future Americans was related to something bigger than
just the language issue . The whole history of immigrant
education lay before me and I could now put the issues of
yesterday's newcomers in its proper perspe~tive.
Yes, it is true that the newcomers of yesterday did not
get bilingual education; but, that is because they did not
get any education . Entry into the .economic system was
possible without formal education. When the immigrants
came from Europe they did not need middle class English
skills and high school diplomas or college degrees to get
into the economy. Those brave souls, transplanted into
what they labeled as the "new world" came _with the
basics: strong backs and a willingness to work. •
When Swedes ran out of farmland on their native soil,
they came to the land which belonged to American
Indians and which, through conquest, became available
to these Scandinavian Lutherans. They transplanted
themselves into a terrain and geography not unlike the
one they left behind, and on the very day they arrived,
Swedes began to work. They could speak to those cows in
Swedish and the cows would give milk. Germans in
Pennsylvania could speak to the corn in German and it
would grow. In effect, the newcomers would have success
in the economy, build their homes, their centers of
worship, and, later on, schools were established. Several
generations would pass in the process. The society did not
need to build schools to prepare the first generation of
non-English speakers and their children for productive
lives in the ecor!omy. That generation confronted the cow
See BILINGUAL, page 6
La Voz deAztlan
page
Immigrant
Continued from page 5
provision mostly serves as a pretext for
massive deportations because it defines
eligibility.
The temporary legalization provision is
available to farmworkers who can prove
resident status from May I, 1985 to May
I, 1986. But in order to gain access to this
provision, one must remain locked into
field work for the next 7 years. Workers
will not be entitled to federal benefits such
as public housing, and will have limited
access to other benefits like welfare and
medicare. They also will not be able to
petition for relatives to join them in the
United States.
This aspect of the bill, Tactaquin stated,
places a racial and national stamp on
Mexican workers, will guarantee farmers
a "pool of cheap labor," and was the
subject of, not surprisingly, the intensive
lobbying efforts of the Western Growers
Association.
The third major component of the bill
was the subject of the longest running
controversy prior to its passage. This
section imposes sanct10ns against em-
Bilingual
Continued from page 5
and the corn. Today's newcomers
confront not the cow nor the corn; but
the computers.
While the generations of yesterday
could wait one, perhaps two, and even
three generations before their offspring
could enter high school and then college,
the newcomers of today have to leapfrog, from the agricultural period well
over the industrial period of strongbacked and willingness-to-work to the
age of information.
1vfost people who today sit on boards
of education, administer school programs and teach in the classrooms are
the third or fourth-generation descendants of immigrants. Their parents may
have earned a.high school diploma; but
their grandparents did not. The farther
back they go, the less formal schooling.
In fact, today's education professionals
represent, for the most part, the first
generation of college graduates in their
individual families. It's not accurate to
say "we made it without bilingual
education" .when history says that
public education did not exist at all or
simply did not figure in any significant
way in the progress of immigrants in an
economy that required, for the most
part, the strong ·backs, the farming
skills, the entrepreneural skills of
newcomers. America was built by nonEnglish speaking people, without formal education.
At the turn of the century the d_ropout
rate for everyone was about 94 percent
but there was no dropout problem.
Schools were irrelevant to the bulk of
newcomers. When schools did not
absorb the children of the immigrants,
to the degree that public schools existed
at all, the economy did.
The dropout is a problem only if the
lack of a diploma is combined with the
inability to get into the economy
without such certificates. The newcomer
of yesterday faced a large dropout rate
but a low dropout problem. Today, we
have a low dropout rate, about 30
percent overall , but
high dropout
problem. Why? Because to get into the .
economy, the workforce needs success
in high school and post-high school
education.
The newcomers of today come to the
U.S. with a strong back and a
willingnf!SS to work, with the same
intelligence of those farmers of old, but
at the wrong time. They cannot get into
the economy and expect a real future
for their children, in the age of
compµters, by growing corn and
milking cows. They cannot have success
in the economy until they have success
in schools. Latinos, along with the
a
ployers who knowingly hire undocumented
workers. Many congr~ssmen have acknowledged this part of the bill as extremely discriminatory and have enacted
certain amendments in an attempt to limit
this effect.
Tactaquin said this will establish discriminatory practice against foreign look.ing people regardless of their status. She
pointed out that it is having an immediate
impact on minority communities. Many
employers, s"he said, are already laying off
people they think may be undocumented,
including many who may be entitled to
legalization under the bill. It also may
provide an excuse for employers to lay off
workers.
The bill calls for a 50 percent increase of
the Immigration and Naturalization Services budget over the next three years.
This, she believes, will only serve to
increase the number of deportations and
do nothing to curb the abuses that occur.
Tactaquin also predicts that this will
also result in thousands more arrests of
Central American refugees fleeing the
violence in their respective homelands.
She-said they face death or imprisonment
if irviy return to their countries. Three
perc~nt of El Sal~ad~rian~ and G~atemalans currently 1mm1gratmg are given
asylum.
Another amendment of the bill, au thoAsians, Pacific Islanders and limited
English proficient groups, some native
to the soil of the Americas, must do
what no other group had to do before
in the ·history of American education:
attend middle class institutions, compete with mainstream classmates, and
achieve success in classes which transfer
infor.mafron~ in English.That's a tall
order. Knowing how to transfer information in English is a basic to such
expectations. As Moore and Pachon
wrote in Hispanics in the United
States:
"It is hard for some critics to understand
why other immigrant groups managed
without bilingual instruction. Actually,
arrivals did not manage. Young children
left school in such large numbers and at
such an early age that failure was
scarcely noticed. Furthermore, the
dropouts survived by fitting themselves
into a much less demanding economy.
A high school diploma is now a bare
minimum for many jobs. A wider range
of children are now expected to remain
in school - not just a chosen few from
upper income ·groups."
However, we must fall into the trap
of teaching Limited English Proficient
(LEP) students English at the expense
fo their education. That happened to
me. When I first went to public school
in New York City, I didn't know any
English and there were no programs to
help me u1,J.:i·stand what the teacher
was sayint, tv vur. rlass. So I would
look arounc! and ir.lltate ri1y c1ass1uat.es,
One day a teacher asked a question. !
heard the noise pregnant with the
meaning fill the classroom and looked
on to see the response of my classmates.
I was prepared to follow the lead of my
peers. Bursomethingstrange occurred.
I panicked as I witnessed only 50
· percent of the class raising their hands.
What was I to do? With which group
should l vote? 1 always tended to do
what the majority of the students did.
But I was trapped, since the response
was not very clear. I listened intensely
as the teacher made the same series of
noises, and I watched for the response.
This time about 60 percent of my
classmates raised their hands. And then
more. When about 80 percent responded with raised hands, I did so, mindful
· of !he fact that mine was hidden in the
masses of hands. My response to what I
could not understand was at least
keeping .pace with what everyone else
was doing.
I ran home. My feet pounded the
concrete sidewalk. I ran up the stairs of
my apartment building and I pushed
the door open. "Mamy, mamy," I asked,
" Que significa la palabra 'finish?' "
("Mom, mom, what does the word
'finish' mean?") She said , " Terminaste
la tarea, mi hijito?" (Did you finish
Wednesday,Nov.26, 1986
rized by Dan Lundgren on behalf of the
Western Growers' Association, will legalize
the discriminatory hiring of citizens over
legal residents. This amendment, according
to Tactaquin, will serve to stratify workers
in a caste like fashion.
The bill, she said , will takf': some time to
be implemented with most of tl~~ ;:r0visions taking effect in May.
Other national organizations such as
the NAACP and the AFL-CIO have
supported the bill to varying degrees
believing that jobs were being taken away.
Only recently did the AFL-CIO agree to
withdraw its support and currently maintains cautious opposition to the bill due to
its strike breaking impact.
The immediate tasks before the immigrant rights movement - mostly conThe bill's urigins go back to Ex-Presi- centrated in the work of Latino and Asian
dent Jimmy Carter's administration with organizations and among legal advocates
the Select Committee on Immigrant - involve community workshops to
Refugee Legislation. Reagan later added educate immigrants on certain protections
his own appointees to the committee under the law and efforts to force the INS
which initiated the Omnibus Immigration to inform people of their rights.
and Control Act, a version which congress
Tactaquin stated that the legal chalfound too repressive to pass: It was later lenges to the bill need to develop into a
altered into the Simpson/ Mazzolli bill in much broader political movement along
1982.
with the immigrant rights movement into
Tactaquin pointed out the rationale a national network.
begun by Reagan to rally public support
Other long term work, she said, must be
for the bill was that "America has lost done to raise the consciousness of the
control of its borders," and that "jobs are larger progressive movement on the history
being lost." Such ideological conditioning of United States relations with Mexico
had a1so affected several members in and Central American countries and to
congress, particularly among many who expose the racist, chauvinist, and antiinitially voted against earlier versions of working class agenda underlying the bill's
the bill. The only candidate in the last passage.
"The real solutions," she said, "rest in
presidential race who came out strongly
against the bill and tried to make it a the long term significance of the bill and
campaign issue was Jessie Jackson, she the implications that it hass for all
immigrant communities."
s;iid.
your task, my son?) So that's why only
50 percent only raised their hands, I
thought. Only 50 percent were finished!
I now understood what the teacher was
asking, and why the class responded as
they did.
That evening at the dinner table, I
noticed a long pause between the bites
by my older broth~r Charlie. I asked
him, "Charlie are you finished?" I felt
good about how quickly I put my new
vocabulary to work. I felt proud that I
knew what the word "finish" meant. I
now knew the word "finish," but I had
not finished my task. I was learning
English at the expense of my education.
Bilingual education is the process
whereby LEP students can learn English
and finish their ta~k. The issues are
separated to create a positive transition
of both empowering newcomers to the
language with new verbal skills; but
iearning, in the langµage they know,
the important curriculum tasks. Bilingual education is an important legitimate education reform for today's
vouth.
Bilingual ed1:1cation is the process
whereby LEP students can learn English
and finish their task. The issues are
separated to create a positive transition
of·both empowering newcomers to the
language with new verbal skills; but
learning, in the languag~ they know,
the important curriculum tasks. Bilingual education is an important legitimate education reform for today's
youth.
Bilingual education programs respond to the real problem of making
instruction understandable. Anyone
who argues that one can get along
without English in the U.S. is a fool!
English has replaced German as the
language of science and French as the
language of diplomacy. English is the
linguafranca of the world. The world's
· commerce largely takes place in international settings in English. When most
of the world studies a foreign language,
it tends to be English . That's reason
enough for us to insist t•hat newcomers
who come to the U.S. schools must
learn English. But there is even a more
powerful reason: English is the common
language of American citizens. It must
be taught, required, strengthened and
perfected in our schooling initiatives.
At their core, all bilingual educational
programs worth their salt aim to teach
English to LEP students. But, while
those LEP students are learning English
so they can learn in English , they can be
learning their math and science in the
language they know.
Monolinguals who have never had
!o learn a second language to compete
m a new and different environment
but who have an appreciation
history, know that the conditions facing
fo;
1
us on the eve of the 21st Century are
very different from conditions faced by
those who came on the eve of the 20th
century.
We must realize that not only do
these newcomers need our enlightened
policy; but we may go one step further.
Not only must these newcomers learn
English, it might be good if we didn't
move too quickly and tell them to
forget Spanish or Vietnamese, or
Chammorro, or T ogalo. Maybe we can
come of age and realize that we cannot,
in the name of turning out good
Americans, limit the freedom of speech
of those new to our shores and / or tell
people to forget what they know. In the
name of education, we cannot argue
that it is better to know less than more.
Bilingual education enriches our best
hopes for a democratic society, making
it safe for differences as well - power-·
ful, practical reasons why we need it
today; even though such programs did
not exist for yesterday's arrivals.
Samuel Be pnces is a professor of
Sociology ·at .Northeastern Illinois
University.
.MEChA meets
in statewide
conference
The largest statewide M EChA conference ·ever took place Nov. 4-5 at
Stanford University in Palo Alro.
More than 600 student activists attended
including members from CSUF, Fresno
City College and local high schools.
MEChA members at the conference
passed resolutions stating its statewide
support for the equal treatment of women,
expansion and retention of Chicano/ Latino.
Studies courses and solidarity with third
world student organizations. They also
stated M EChA 's opposition to the CSU
1988 requirement changes, the SimpsonRodino immigration reform bill, Proposition 63 (The English as the official state
language amendment) and the United
State's intervention in Central America.
The conference featured speeches by
the co-chairperson of'the United Farm
Workers Union , Dolores Huerta, the
governor of New Mexico , Toney Anaya,
and a represantative of the Watsonville
cannery strikers , Gloria Betancourt.
Along with represantative from black and
Asian student groups, all expressed the
need to create alliances with other organizations to build a powerful progressive
movement.
M EChA ( M ovimiento Estudiantil
Chicano de Aztlan) is a nationawide
Chicano student organization represented
from high schools thru universi,ties.
Wednesday,Nov.26,1986
La Voz de Aztlan
page
i
A silent protest for U.S. policy
By Bill Lerch
,
la Vaz Writer
•
A familiar scene every Wednesday is the
line of people silently protesting U.S.
policy in_Central America , particularly
funding of Nicaraguan Contras.
"By protesting we are excercising freedom of expression and our duties as
citizens. We don't want to be casualties of
the war," Jose Lopez said as he equated
U.S. policy in the Central American
country to the Vietnam War.
This protest, sponsered. by M EChA,
communicates to students that a problem
in Central America exists, and it involves
everyone.
Dr. Dale Bush, an economics professor
on campus also commented on the situation. "1 'm here for the same reason I
protested the Vietnam War"
He said that the situations today in
' Central America are reminders of a
mistake gone past. Students made a difference in h·is day, and he said they can
make a differepce today.
"This is how the protests to stop the war
in Vietnam started. First, only a few
protested; then hundreds protested, "Bush
said.
The protesters' main goal is to inform
students that the U.S. government represents not only a threat to the Central
American people but also to the sanctuary
of a sovereign nation.
Signs that read "Stop killing the
Nicaraguan People" and "Wake up
America. No More Vietnams,"implythat
the horrors of Vietnam lurk in our current
times.
"Basically we want the war to stop in Central America," said Mario H·uerta.
"Our goal is to restore peace in Central
American countries." The determination
t~_stqp death in the land connecting North
5 TV p
.
0
aupport
-For
t~rrori Sn,:
If)
[enfra I
Charles Fair Jr. is tired as he joins the protest against the United States' policies in Central America.
America and South America exists in the
silent protest.
The United States' involvement in•
Central America increases the chances of
young college-aged men fighting in
Central America. The circumstances of
the Vietnam War was to hault the spread
of communism just as is the case in
Nicaragua·.
"Just because communism is for self
determimttion doesn't make communism
bad," said Dr.- Robert Allison, an econo-"
Lawrence Tovar/La Vaz
Dale Chipman(left) debates with Campus Latin American Support Committee
Member Pat Young(right) over the history of the United States' involvement in the
Central American re~lon. The two debated at a recent protest held every
Wednesday '" the Free Speech Area and sponsered by MEChA and the Campus
Latin American Support Committee.
mies professor. "The Sandinista revolution in Central America is very popular
with the people down there." Allison lived
in Central America for almost a year. He
said that the Nicaraguan people are no
longer hungry and that they are happy
with the current government. "But Ronald
Reagan wants victory for the contras to
stop the ·popular Nicaraguan government."
"Ronald Reagan is the most uniformed
individual ever to hold the office of the
U .S presidency," commented Pat Young,
a member of the Campus Latin American
Support Committee. According to
Young, the United States is fighting against
what the Nicaraguan people want.
"l'wo out · of three people are for the
Sandinistas. They (the Nicaraguans) have
free education, medical care, and elections." In fact, Young who has been to
Nicaragua several times said that political
parties from the "far right to the extreme
left" participated in the last election.
According to Lopez, an organizer of the
protest, the Soviet Union js not directly
involved in Central America. "Reagan
wants to rally the ·people at home to
support the war cause." He said t_he
president uses the Red Wave of Communism to do so.
Lopez went on to say that Reagan is
"Red Baiting" by saying the Soviet Union
is directly involved in instigating the
revolution in Nicaragua.
"The Soviets Union is not direectly
involved with the revolution in Central
A~enca
Lawrence Tovar/la Yoz
America," Lopez said.
According to many in the protest the
United States is terrorizing the Nicaraguan
people by funding the Contras.
"We think it's morally wrong," said
Lopez. "The Reagan administration is
fund\ng genocide."
"It's a moral outrage," Bush said. "Any
American simply has to be outraged at
our governement."
But what atrocities are happening in the
eyes of the protesters?
"Reagan wants to attack civilian populations to destabilize the country for the
people to surrender," Lopez said.
''Over 10,000 Nicaraguan civilians tortured and raped by U.S. supported
contras," said one sign by the Latin
American Support Committee.
So, the protesters see .what they think,
but what do the onlookers think? Some of
the protesters speculated that.
"Why think about a war when .you can
go into the pit and talk to the frat boys?"
said Jeff Clark. Another protester, Steffen
Lovell said, "Students aren't sure what's
going on." He said people often walk by
and are puzzled.
Chris Dugan, a student from England,
hopes "People will think around the issue.
We want.to spread knowledge."
The protesters believe people are not
educated about Central America. They
say they want p·eople to be aware to make
a change before the United States enters;
into another Vietnam-like nightmare.
Chicano heritage: influenced by two cultures
By Robert Castorena
Contributing Writer
It appears that a new level of Chicano
consciousness is manifesting itself in
the 1980s as more Chicanos identify
themselves as Chicanos.
The Chicano does-not merely identify
himself because something inherently
within says, "you are a Chicano." No,
there are outside elements that constantly remind the Chicano of his
heritage. The Chicano experience is
influenced by the cultures of two
countries, the United States and Mexico, and is a synthesis of the two cultures.
Although the Chicano consciousness
has many characteristics similar to other
Latinos throughout the Americas,
particularly the Mexicano, the Chicano
consciousness has its own distinct and
unique charactcns~1•.;s.
To understand C!iica.no heri~:1ge ore .
Analysis
must look back into history. The birth
of Chicano consciousness occurred
when what is currently known as
Southwestern United States became a
part of the United States territories.
Before the United States-Mexican War
the territory was a part of Mexico, and
before Mexico gained its independence ·
from Spain it was a part of New Spain.
When the change from Mexico's to
the United States'government occurred
many conflicts arose between the governed and governors. Major differences existed. For example, the people's
culture and thinking processes were
influenced by the Catholic religion and
the Spanish language (the root of both
is found in Latin), but the thinking
processes of the people who governed
the region was molded by the protestant
religion and the English language (the
root of both is found in Anglo-Saxon).
The term Chicano is a variation of
\he word Mexicano. In Spanish the
letter X can be pronounced either like
the letter J or Ch. So the term Chicano
is Mexicano (Mechicano) less the Mewhich is appropriate since the Chicano
experience began, and its own heritage
started once the Southwest became a
part of the United States.
As the differences between the governed and governors became apparent,
inequalities against the Chicano 09- ·
curred in the socio-econo-political
processes. Therefore, society, as reflected by the government , began to oppress
the Chicano. The negative attitudes of
society toward the Chicano b·ecause of
differences caused the ·Chicano com-
munity to withdraw itself from Society.
In the 1940s and 50's, intellectuals
from the Chicano community began to
recognize the uniqueness of the Chicano
heritage. As they educated the Chicano
community, particularly university students, the commi,.mity asked for equality
which directly challenged the oppressive
conditions that existed.
When the request was denied the
Chicano community took action which
was considered unorthodox. Today
there is a tendency to view the Chicano
solely by what occurred in the 1960s
and early 1970s . This tendency occurs
because it was in the I960s and early
1970s the entire Chicano community
challenged the oppressive conditions .
The challenge was looked upon unfavorably .
From then until, 1980 there was a
See HERITAGE, page 8
Page
(o)oo
_ _ (Q)
_!:_T_7_~-~-'-'_____
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 1986
a ~oz ue z ,an
OPJNJON-----------
Co urt needs life
Like the U.S. government it is
modeled after, the CSU F Associatea
Students government has three
branches, each with a specific duty that
serves to prevent concentration of power
from falling into the hands of one
individual or group of individuals to
provide a balance between them.
The executive, legislative and judicial
branches are theoretically obstacles to
de potism, oligarchy and what
Alexander Hamilton called the "tyranny
of the majority."
o one person, despite his popularity
or ability to manipulate, can introduce
any legislation that usurps the power of
the other branches of government or
violate the constitution, the ultimate
source of laws and power in this
country.
Student government at Fresno State is
an excellent example of how this system
becomes unresponsive and oligarchical
when one of the branches is missing and
the constitution is ignored.
The student court of the A.S. has been
non-existent for several years. Its first
meeting was held last week. Without an
active Student Court, the door is open
for the executives and senators to act as t
. their own court and claim extraconstitutional power.
A.S. President Bob Whalen seems
unconcerned by this situation as his
recent actions have exemplified.
Constitutionally, the president has five
weeks from the beginnig of the semester
to make appointments to the student
court. Although there is only one justice
on the court, Ben Lau (an appointment
of last year's president Jeff Hansen),·
Whalen made no effort to activate the
court or appoint anyone until the
seventh week of school. This ignored not
only the constitution, but also Lau's plea
to get other members.
After it was discovered what Whalen
tried to do, the senate sent the matter to
the Personnel Committee in order to
complete membership of the court. I was
one of those approved and was also
approved by the senate l l-2. Whalen, in
his most obvious attempt to stifle the
power of the court, vetoed my
appointment
Hansen's actions last year are an
example of how an executive can claim
just about any power without a cou·rt
(and perhaps one of the reasons why
Whalen does not want the court).
After the senate spent 14 hours before
agreeing on the 1986-87 budget, Hansen
arbitrarily vetoed line items he did not
like - a power the president has never
had and can only get through a student
referendum. Three organizations Hansen
disagreed with politically were left out of
the budget. Whalen's obvious
Commentary
By Danny Chacon
antagonism towards such groups as the
Chicano-Latino Student Organization
(which he vetoed this semester) and
other progressive organizations leaves
little doubt that he would use such
powers in future budgets.
What if the A.S. president were not as
conservative as Whalen? What if the
president was a "radical activist" with
antagomsm towards the Inter Busi11ess
Council? Then perhaps Whalen would
be fighting for a Student Court. Clearly,
no one should be above the constitution.
Even if Whalen does not make any mo.re
abuses, he is setting a precedent for
future executives.
It is not so much the antagonism
Whalen may have towards the student
court nor is it his indifference to the
constitution is detrimental to
student government. The bad thing
about his attempt to curtail the court'is
how he has politicized it in the process.
Not only has it become a divisive issue
in the senate, but it has also set up
dangerous guidelines as to what an
acceptable political background is for a
justice.
Lau, a member of the Inter Business
Council which is the back bone of
Whalen's Reality Party, is an acceptable
member of the student court. Danny
Chacon, a Chicano activist, is not.
When Whalen vetoed my
·
appointment, he realized that the
majority of the senators who supported
me, was not enough to sustain a veto.
He therefore made a massive lobbying
effort to get me off, inviting senators
into his office telling them who knows
what. This put me into the position of
either defending myself and
compromising the dignity f the court, or
staying above the politics of student
government. l chose the latter.
Even though Whalen managed to
convince only Sen. Tim Jolly to make
the flip-flop and successfully sustain the
veto, 1 still believe I did the right thing.
I hav_e just learned that the Personnel
Commi'1ee appointed me as a justice
again. It will go back to the senate for
approval 'Jlnd subject to Whalen's veto,
of course. _J will not lobby the senators.
It is important that anyone with
knowledge of student government be
· appointed tl\is semester rather than
waiting until\January when Whalen will
have another five weeks to delay the
judicial branch of the A.S. government.
r
~-'
Heritage
Continued from page 7
limited movement toward equality;but
since 1981 there has been a reversal cf
that movement. There how exists •in
society an attitude which allows policies
to be instituted that are detrimental to
the Chicano. For example, both the
English only initiative ( Proposition 63),
and the immigration bill recently passed
by congress and approved by the
Pre.,sident are manifestations of society's
attitudes. It appears that the conservative elements in society are particularly paranoid, thinking for example
that Spa_n ish will be preferred over
English. What most fail to see is that
the Spanish language and culture has
always influenced the Southwestern
United States and is one of the region's
unique characteristics.
Again, it must be remembered that
before the Southwest became a part of
U.S . territories, Spanish culture was
firmly established and will continue to
influence the region primarily through
the Chicano.
Clearly the Chicano experience is
unique and positive despite attempts to
oppress him. The Chicano shoqld not
allow the current trend of negative
attitudes in society to affect his attitude.
The Chicano should continue to require
that real changes occur so that oppr.es-·
sive conditions are removed and movement toward true equality can begin
once again. More importantly, the
Chicano should continue to walk with
dignity and work diligently toward
these goals.
Little Man's 9ulture taken away from him
The dust settled behind me on the
distant junkyard. The legal slavery
toiled in the fields, blurred by the
stingy heat of the sun. An Oasis of
concrete and buried history loomed
up at the far end of the road.
The approaching town greeted me
with ·a decrept, "Get your used cars
here." It's real meaning said, "Get
yourself a second-hand culture here
fool."
Such a sign might be reasonably
sane in an immigrant's neighborhood,
but not in the colonized peoples'
homeland- whether defeated or not.
Someone is buying.
The salesman has sold and will
continue to sell.
· The first bag of goodies was filled
with his language; He clipped their
native tongues off. There were times
when the wrong language got its head
cut off. The man did very well.
,
Now there is a newer and improved
American Cancer:
An Opinion
By Guadalupe Tovar
model-model No. 63 .
How soon will it be before heads
start to roll again? Maybe it will be
the next law.
This newer hand-me-down culture
is making another divide and conquer
tr:ap. When you swallow some it will
· make you sick. And when it comes
back up it won't smell very good.
What a mess it will make.
It, like money is powerful. Money
breeds desire. No. 63 breeds anger.
Wallace Black Elk said, "Evil
thoughts, thoughts of hate are like
stones thrown at you by somebody
else. ;hey are not yours unle'-S you
take ont: and :\ck:10wieuge i~ with
your rr,outh. When you speai<. it.. it
then becomes yours."
Hey Little Man, the man knows
you. He knows your ego and your
need to feel big. He knows you're not
man enough to fight him. He knows
you ~re so naive that you will fight
your brother because you are not
educat~d enough to stand next to him
He thinks you are fearful of being a
"Trojan Horse" for fear of being a
sellout. He thinks you can't dress like
him and still keep your own identity.
He thinks you won't be able to keep
your thoughts separate from his
hogwash.
That is good salesmanship.
A good salesman has to believe in
his products. But the prod4cts are
clones that appear similar to him.
The clones don't know it, but they
are in the same boat. As America's
industry continues to move out they
are becoming a part of a new
developing nation. The Japaneese will
be their employer too.
They only see you Little Man.
He beleives you -do not join his
organization because you are
inferior__:_just as he has labeled you.
See how well the label works. It is
almost automatic. He hasn't said one
word. Your ideology is atken from his
brother. You are him.
Listen Little Man, you are
awesome. Thais why they try to keep
you down. They don't want to call
you Spanish because they want you
to be inferior.
Do you feel those rocks? They
named you well by accidentHispanic. You are his panic,someone
to fear.
Hey listen Little Man stand up and
. get counted. This is your homeland.
Don't stay excluded.