Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States: The State of the Field

3. Policy and Planning Research for Spanish as a Heritage Language: From Language Rights to Linguistic Resource

C H A P T E R 3 Policy and Planning Research for Spanish as a Heritage Language FROM LANGUAGE RIGHTS TO LINGUISTIC RESOURCE Glenn Martı́nez, University of Texas–Pan American O N A SIMMERING SUMMER DAY in the arid Texas Panhandle town of Amarillo , Marta Laureano walked into the courthouse to what she expected would be a routine child custody hearing. The outcome, however, turned out to be far from ordinary and within a day would make headlines in major newspapers from New York to Los Angeles. In the course of the hearing, state district judge Samuel Kiser learned that Laureano routinely spoke Spanish to her daughter. He ordered Laureano to speak only in English to her fiveyear -old and threatened to deny her custody of her daughter if she persisted in speaking Spanish to the girl: ‘‘If she starts first grade with the other children and cannot even speak the language that the teachers and the other children speak and she’s a full-blood American citizen, you’re abusing that child and you’re relegating her to the position of housemaid. Now, get this straight. You start speaking English to this child because if she doesn’t do good in school, then I can remove her because it’s not in her best interest to be ignorant. The child will only hear English’’ (Verhovek 1995). The judge’s ruling was swiftly criticized by numerous advocacy groups around the country and was characterized by the former Texas attorney general Dan Morales as ‘‘way off base’’ (Verhovek 1995). 61 62 GLENN MARTÍNEZ Eight years after the uproar caused by Judge Kiser’s ruling, Spanish made headlines again when the Australian comedian Barry Humphries, in the guise of the feisty Dame Edna, responded to the question of a torn romantic wondering about the value of learning Spanish in the February 2003 edition of Vanity Fair: ‘‘Forget Spanish, there’s nothing in that language worth reading except Don Quixote , and a quick listen to the CD of Man of La Mancha will take care of that. There was a poet named Garcia Lorca, but I’d leave him on the intellectual back burner if I were you. As for everyone’s speaking it, what twaddle! Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk to? The help? Your leaf blower? Study French or German, where there are at least a few books worth reading, or, if you’re American, try English’’ (cited by Emery 2003). An immediate uproar ensued when the magazine hit newsstands in late January 2003. In a letter to the editor, Wendy Maldonado repudiated Dame Edna and asserted that ‘‘we are not just ‘the help’ and the ‘leaf blowers.’ We are architects and activists, journalists and doctors, governors and athletes, scientists and business people. . . . We speak Spanish, but we also speak fluent English, and many of us speak other languages as well’’ (cited by Emery 2003). She went on to demand a written apology from Dame Edna and the editors of Vanity Fair and called for a national boycott of the magazine until these demands were met. The visibly angry yet carefully crafted statement reverberated around the country , and it led major professional organizations such as the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the National Council for La Raza to endorse Maldonado ’s call for a national boycott. Although the editors never apologized, they did release a statement saying that they regretted that the statements had caused offense but went on to point out that in this regard the fictional character Dame Edna is an ‘‘equal opportunity insulter’’ (Emery 2003). These two events clearly illustrate an environment of hostility and subordination that has situated many Spanish heritage language communities in this country since the initial contacts of Anglo pioneers and Spanish settlers in the US Southwest in the nineteenth century (cf. Martı́nez 2008; Garcı́a 1993). Marta Laureano’s story illustrates how negative attitudes about Spanish can result in forceful interventions, sanctioned by the authority of the state, that silence Spanish-speaking voices and that erase the public representation of Spanish speakers in this country. The Dame Edna story, however, demonstrates how these deeply felt interventions ignite short fuses even when negative ideologies of Spanish are articulated for comedic effect. What these two stories tell us is that whereas ideologies of language (cf. Leeman, this volume) both shape and inform official interventions in language use, as in the case of Judge Kiser’s...