A Backwards State
Arizona bans two University of Houston books from its schools as it targetsLatin works
Chicano! A History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement by F. Arturo Rosales
Message to Aztlan by Rodolfo Corky Gonzales
Houston-based publisher of U.S. Latino literature, Arte Público, is making waves in Arizona with two of its works getting banned in Tucson schools.
After dissolving its Mexican American Studies program, the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) posted a list of seven books to be removed from classrooms — or "boxed and stored" and "moved to the district storage facility" according to a typo-laden statement from administrators (the word "Mexian" has at least since been corrected).
Included among the restricted works were Arte Público's popular titles Message to Aztlán as well as Chicano! The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement, which accompanied an award-winning PBS television series.
"The dissolving of high school ethnic studies programs is the first beachhead in what [Arizona] leaders seem to hope will spread to the universities," Arte Público founder Nicolàs Kanellos said.
After announcing a extensive list of contraband titles that featured Shakespeare's The Tempest, TUSD backpeddled with a claim that the books weren't banned, but withdrawn from classes as part of a 2011 state-wide mandate banning ethnic studies programs.
Arte Público founder Nicolàs Kanellos, who brought the press to the University of Houston when he joined the school's faculty in 1980, is no stranger to this type of pushback.
In 1999, community leaders in Alpine, Texas unsuccessfully attempted to remove the one of publisher's bestselling titles, Victor Villaseñor's Rain of Gold, from local public school classes. In 2003, a small printer in Illinois refused to print Happy Birthday, Jesus on fundamental religious grounds.
But with Arizona, Kanellos fears that the state's broader anti-immigration legislation is helping to fuel the ban on ethnic studies programs that targets sections of the population on racial lines.
"The larger issue here is that Arizona schools are eliminating important curriculum," he said. "The dissolving of high school ethnic studies programs is the first beachhead in what state leaders seem to hope will spread to the universities."
"Legislators say these books and programs teach hate," Kanellos said, referring to the Arizona ban that views ethnic studies curricula as promoting the overthrow of U.S. government and advocating ethnic solidarity. "We're worried about other school and school boards, especially in places like Alabama and Georgia where similar anti-immigrations laws have passed."
This coming year, Arte Público hopes to counteract similar narrow-minded curriculum mandates in Texas as it expands its cultural outreach website, Latinoteca, to include free educational materials on the role and contributions of Latino Americans in Texas history.
