Tuesday, February 22, 2005

If Mexican-Americans in Southern California are not "Spanish" or even their first cousins, then what are they—besides being Spanish-speaking Americans?

The Times asked this question recently of Dr. George I. Sanchez, University of Texas expert on ethnic groups in the Southwest.

"They defy categorical classification as a group and no term or phrase adequately describes them," he said. ...

Even their language, Dr. Sanchez points out, is heterogeneous.

"Their mother tongue, their vernacular, is usually Spanish—of every conceivable variation, that is. In fact, for some the home-language is English; for others a part-English, part-Spanish vernacular is the rule."

The reason the "Spanish heritage" is propagandized out of proportion at the expense of the Mexican-Indian heritage is the Anglo-American's attitude toward the so-called non-white races, several educators charged at a recent Mexican-American seminar in Phoenix.

"The Mexican-American is a victim of confusion, frustration and insecurity because he has been taught through social pressure to be ashamed of and even disown his ethnic ancestry," says Marcos de Leon, teacher of Spanish at Van Nuys High School.

Use of the Spanish language, say other leaders, is one thing that Mexican-Americans have over other students and they tend to exploit it.

The controversy centers on two arguments:

Mexican-American students should concentrate on English because speaking Spanish too much hurts their proficiency in the "national language," English. Besides, said a school psychologist, children growing up in a bicultural environment are more prone than others to neurosis and mental disorders.

Mexicans are indigenous to the Southwest, and so the Spanish language is part of their culture which should not be tampered with. Having colonized the Southwest, Spanish-speaking people refuse to abandon their traditions because of the advent of Anglo-American culture. ...

This approach infuriates the growing number of militant Mexican-American leaders, many of whom now insist that meetings held to discuss the problems of this ethnic group should be conducted in Spanish.

Some education experts say that what is needed in the Southwest is for non-Mexican-Americans to become "Mexicanized"—not the other way around. Asked how the Mexican-American can find his way into U.S. society, Dr. Jack D. Forbes, research program director of UC Berkeley's Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development, recently told the U.S. Civil Rights Commission:

"The Anglo-American, quite obviously, is the new-comer." It is the Anglo-American, he said, who should learn more about the Mexican-American, his heritage and his culture. No one, he continued, can truly call himself a Southwesterner "unless he is a Mexicanized person to a considerable degree."

Not Enough

To the extremist Mexican-American leaders not even this is enough. What these leaders want for the 5 million Mexican-Americans in the five Southwestern states—California, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas—is separatism not a "Mexicanized" society.

The controversial New Mexico Spanish-speaking leader, Reies Lopez Tijerina, who preaches to his followers that they should speak Spanish as often as possible, is a prime advocate of a separate—but equal—state for Mexican-Americans.[*]

Though few take the separatist movement seriously, educators in the Southwest worry about Mexican-Americans retreating into a "Mexican shell."