Though the 2010 U.S. Census shows that nearly 30 percent of Arizona’s population identifies as Hispanic or Latino, you won’t find any Chicano studies programs in K–12 classrooms in the state.
Nor will you find associated literature at many school libraries.
That’s because a 2010 state law bans Chicano ethnic studies from being taught in primary and secondary schools—and the Arizona legislature also recently introduced a bill to prohibit similar curricula at the university level.
The ban is one of several recent laws passed in Arizona that have figured significantly in the heated immigration debate.
“It’s a pretty egregious example of censorship going on in our schools,” said David Wacks, head of the UO Department of Romance Languages. “It raises questions about who gets to decide what our national culture is going to be.”
On May Day last spring, fourteen UO professors, staff and faculty members from departments across campus joined Wacks on stage at the EMU amphitheater to read selected passages from literature banned in Arizona.
Wacks said he organized the event to show support for students and teachers in Arizona and to raise public awareness of the issue.
He started off the reading with a passage from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. While not explicitly a Chicano studies book, Zinn’s volume offers a view of U.S. history from the perspective of civilians outside the dominant power structure, including slaves, laborers, suffragettes and Native Americans—perspectives often ignored in textbooks.
Dozens of students and others from the campus community gathered on the steps of the amphitheater to listen in.
Spanish professor Juan Epple turned his stage time over to the students of his upper-division Spanish theater course, who acted out—in Spanish—two short plays currently outlawed under interpretation of the Arizona statute: Soldado Razo and Los Vandidos, both by Chicano playwright Luis Valdez.
Graduate student Zelda Haro, who identified herself as a Yaqui Chicana from Tucson (the Yaqui are a Native American tribe from what is now northern Mexico), read from the book Ceremony by Leslie Silko, reminding listeners that the Arizona ban also extends to Native American books and poetry.
Other books banned under the Arizona statute include Drown, by Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz, The House on Mango Street by American Book award winner Sandra Cisneros and even Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
—Patricia Hickson
While reviled as a people, the Roma of Eastern Europe are revered for their music.
