Walking the Path:  Some Thoughts for Latina and Latino Graduates

La Despedida- May 9, 1998

The University of Texas at San Antonio

Yolanda Chávez Leyva

Behavioral and Cultural Sciences

     I am very honored to be here with you tonight as you, your familias and friends, fellow graduates, and faculty celebrate your graduation from the University of Texas at San Antonio.  In her poem, "University Avenue," Tejana poet Pat Mora writes, "We are the first/ of our  people to walk this path."    And for many of us, myself included, that is true.  Many of us somos los primeros, the first to graduate from a university.  To  many of us "walking this path" of the university has meant entering an unknown land whose valleys and mountains we learned to navigate through trial and error, through the support of our families and friends and through the assistance of  professors and mentors who took us aside to share what they had learned.
    Your graduation from UTSA represents years of hard work, dedication, and sacrifice, on your part and the part of your families.  Tonight we applaud your achievement.  Education has long been a dream in our community, despite the stereotypes and the political rhetoric which labels us failures.  Your graduation today builds on that dream and on that long history of hope.  I am here to tell you that your achievement, although based on your work and effort, represents more than an individual accomplishment.  It symbolizes another step taken on a road which our community began building long ago.  Tonight I present two challenges-- one, to look back and reflect on the path which we, as a people, have walked and the second, to look forward, to glimpse the future, to imagine what is in the distance.
     Let us begin by looking back and remembering, thanking those who in the face of so many obstacles, cleared the way for us, laying one stone after another, carefully filling in the spaces between each one, so that we could walk that path with greater ease, with fewer stumbles. Understanding our present and our future must always begin with remembering the past. To quote  Chicano writer, Benjamin Sáenz, "I cling to my culture because it is my memory-- and what is a poet without memory?"  I would paraphrase Sáenz.  What is a community without memory?
     In 1910 and 1911, Jovita Idar and her father, Clemente Idar, investigated the exclusion of Tejano children from Texas schools.  In a series of articles, their newspaper, La Crónica, documented the ways in which Mexican children were systematically segregated or in many cases totally excluded from the educational system of our state.  To correct this, the Idar family called on the community to work together, "en virtud de los lazos de sangre que nos unen,"  by virtue of those ties that bind our community together.  Their work, they wrote, was grounded  in notions of justice.  In the fall of 1911, they, along with other Tejanos, organized el Primer Congreso Mexicanista, which called for, among other things, educational  equality.  Out of this meeting la Liga Femenil Mexicanista was founded, advocating for the education and development of Tejana women.  For laying these stones on the path which we have walked, let us thank them.
     In the 1930s,  we continued to demand equality.  At that time, Tejano children in our city attended overcrowded schools.  Fifty children per classroom was common.  More often than not, the "Mexican" schools were actually dilapidated wooden buildings with no air conditioning, and little space for  playgrounds.  The disparity between the westside schools and the others was striking.  In response to these conditions, over thirty local  organizations gathered in December of 1934 to found la Liga de Defensa Escolar.  The goal of la Liga was to lobby the San Antonio School District to provide adequate facilities for San Antonio's westside school children and to educate the community about the rights of our children.  At the same time, Mexicano parents in Dilley, Cotulla, San Antonio, and Kingsville were founding PTAs, intent on achieving educational opportunity for their children.     For laying these stones on the path which we have walked, let us thank them.
     By the 1940s, our community had widened the path for us.  In 1948, Minerva Delgado, joined by other parents filed a suit against school districts in Central Texas for  segregating Mexican American children.  It was not the first such court case and it was not to be the last. The court ruled in favor of Minerva Delgado and the other  parents-- segregation of Tejano children was ruled unconstitutional and illegal.  For widening the path which we have walked, let us thank them.
 In the 1950s, Felix Tijerina envisioned a program which would prepare Tejano children to enter school and the Little Schools of the 400 were born.  Tijerina had been forced to drop out of school at age nine to work, following the death of his father.  At age 13 he moved to Houston but knowing no English, found little opportunity.  Starting as a busboy in a Mexican restaurant, Tijerina eventually became the owner of a successful chain of restaurants.  His dream, the Little Schools, las Escuelitas, would prepare children to enter first grade by teaching them  400 important English words and would introduce children to the school environment.  The first teacher of the  program was a seventeen-year-old high school sophomore, Isabel Verver, who had read about Tijerina's proposal in a magazine and volunteered to teach the first group of children. She had entered first grade in a segregated school in Texas only a decade before and the painful memories of entering school and not being understood remained fresh.  The first class was attended by only three children.  She was not discouraged.  By the following year, over 400 children were attending nine Escuelitas.   For extending the path which we have walked, let us thank them.
     By the 1960s, we had grown tired of not seeing ourselves,  our histories, or our realities reflected in the schools and high school and college students began demanding changes. In 1968, hundreds of San Antonio high school students walked out of school, demanding changes in the curriculum, and the hiring of Mexican American teachers.  And in the 1960s and 1970s we saw the rise of Chicano studies programs and classes in high schools and colleges all over the Southwest.  And it became more complex.  By the 1970s and 1980s, Mexican American women demanded recognition of our contributions and our history as Mexicanas and women.  Again quoting Chicana poet, Pat Mora, "We, and all women, need and deserve our past."   For  making the path which we have walked more complex, let us thank them.
     The path which we have walked getting to this place tonight has been long.  Each stone along that path has been laid down for us by those who came before us-- by Jovita Idar who stood in the doorway of her family's newspaper office, facing down Texas Rangers who wanted to stop their calls for equality; by la Liga de Defensa Escolar who demanded properly built schools for children in San Anto's westside;  by  the parents who attended PTA meetings when they had so much else to do; by Felix Tijerina and  Isabel Verver who wanted to help the children because their own childhood pain was so deep; by the Lanier High School students who walked out of class in the spring of 1968,  protesting inadequate educations; and by the Chicanas who demanded that their history be told as well.
     But the path is not finished yet.  By attending and graduating from the university, you have continued the work of laying down stones.  And when you leave tonight to begin a new job, or look for a job, or enter graduate school, or pursue whatever goals you may have,  your challenge is to continue that work.  You are the realization of a vision,  of a dream,  of a hope that our people would not let die-- no matter the obstacles.
     You have what Tejano Ruben Lozano wrote of in the 1930s-- you have the "weapon of    thinking."     How will you use it?  What stones will you lay on the path?  How will you ease the walk for those who come after you?  Your younger brothers and sisters?  Your children?  Your grandchildren?   I leave you to imagine, to dream, to help create your future and ours.
     Yes, tonight is a  Despedida, a leave-taking, an ending, but I am like Olivia Castellano, Chicana professor and writer.  "I am not good at endings;  I prefer to celebrate beginnings."    Tonight as  we look back to thank those who eased our path, we also look forward and celebrate a new beginning.  And to go return to where I began, with el Primer Congreso Mexicanista of 1911:  I would like to end with the words of one of the delegates, Sr. Telésforo Macias.    Just as he put forth these words as a challenge to the Tejanos and Tejanas gathered together one fall day in 1911, I put them forth to you, as a challenge and an invitation.

A trabajar, pues, con fe.