Hispanics absent from history lessons

BROWNSVILLE -- State Board of Education member Mary Helen Berlanga on Monday called on the Texas Education Agency to include Hispanics, women and Native Americans in the state’s core public school curriculum known as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills.

The TEKS is being revised for the first time since 1997, and this time Berlanga isn’t taking any chances. At a news conference Monday on the UTB-TSC campus, she said that what the TEA told her during the last revision won’t fly this time around.

When Berlanga pointed out in 1997 that significant contributions by Hispanics were being left out of the TEKS, the TEA told her that publishers of the textbooks the state would use knew about those contributions and would include them.

Instead, the U.S. history segment of the TEKS that Texas students study in fourth and 11th grades includes scarcely a mention of Hispanics.

“Not once is any Latino mentioned by name,” said Julio Noboa, an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmonst College who has written a book on the subject. “Not Latino, not Hispanic, not Mexican, not Mexican-American or any other term referring to Hispanics.”

Berlanga said the experience taught her that “if it’s not in the TEKS, it’s not going to be in our textbooks.” She called on the public to help her make her case by telling her or the TEA directly, about things that should be included in the TEKS.

“Each subject area has its own TEKS and contributions by Hispanics, women, Native Americans and other minorities must be included for the TEKS to be accurate,” she said.

“We’re trying to prevent what happened in the past from happening again.”

Earlier this year, documentary film producer Ken Burns and the Public Broadcasting System came under fire for not including the stories of Hispanic soldiers in Burns’ World War II film “The War.” Burns claimed there were no Hispanic soldiers who wanted to be interviewed for the project.

At Monday’s news conference, Corpus Christi freelance writer Esther Bonilla Read introduced Hispanic World War II veteran Jose Angel Flores of Corpus Christi, now 90, whose family, she said, has been in the United States since the 1700s.

Relating Flores’ recollection of his induction into the U.S. Army, Read said he told her it was the first time he and other Mexican-American recruits had heard themselves referred to as “Americans.”

Read is writing “After the Blessing,” a non-fiction book that showcases Mexican-Americans prior to, during and after WWII. She showed a photo of Flores, reproduced from the mug shot taken at the German prisoner of war camp where he was imprisoned.

“He ended up in the dreaded Hurtgen Forest in Belgium, survived, was taken a prisoner of war and was sent to Stalag 12-A,” Read said. “His brother Jorge, also served, and when their mother found out that Jose was a missing in action, she told Jorge, ‘now you look for your brother.’

“Now that’s a Hispanic mother,” Read said, briefly tearing up. “You can just imagine him looking for his brother all over Germany.”

Their mother’s concern ended when Jose wrote to her, “I am a POW. I am in good health.”

Naboa said Texas textbooks are replete with examples of omissions. In just the U.S. history TEKS that fourth- and 11th-graders study, United Farmworkers of America founder César Chavéz is missing, as is William C. Velasquez, whose Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project “changed the whole political dynamic” by registering thousands of Mexican-American voters across the Southwest.

There is no mention of League of United Latin American Citizens or the American GI Forum, both of which were founded in Corpus Christi, nor of Henry Cisneros, the former San Antonio mayor and U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development who is now president of Spanish-language television network Univision.

Read said she thinks Hispanic World War II veterans sometimes get overlooked because “we’re quiet. Nobody boasts.”

“But our men were heroes … They stayed there until the end. All we want is equal representation.”

Berlanga said the TEKS would be reviewed over the next several years. English language arts is under review now, then science and later social studies.

“We’re hoping to be involved in the writing,” Noboa said. “We’re hoping to be involved at the ground level.”

What’s missing?

Many historic Hispanic figures and events significant to Mexican American communities are not taught in Texas classrooms, according to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills curriculum. They include:

César Chavéz, founder, United Farmworkers of America

William C. Velasquez, founding member of Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, Mexican American Youth Organization and Mexican American Unity Council. Source: William C. Velasquez Institute

League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), focuses heavily on education, civil rights and employment for Hispanics and provides more than a million dollars in scholarships to Hispanic students each year. Source: www.lulac.org