Becoming Neighbors in a Mexican American Community: Power, Conflict, and Solidarity

Chapter 7. Constructing Puentes: Mexican American and Mexican Immigrant Mobilization

Chapter 7 Constructing Puentes: Mexican American and Mexican Immigrant Mobilization ‘‘¡Sí, se puede! ¡Sí, se puede! ¡Sí, se puede!’’ Hundreds of marching parents and students shout in unison outside the Hacienda– La Puente Unified School District. Their chants become louder as passing motorists honk and yell words of encouragement. As many as five hundred La Puente–area residents have come together this June  evening to demonstrate their support for bilingual education. Just days earlier, word had spread that a member of the school board had proposed its elimination. To consider the state of bilingual education, a school district study session was scheduled for this evening, and community residents have come out in force.  , June ,  To casual observers, the participants in this demonstration are united. They share a common concern for bilingual education and similar racial/ethnic and class positions as working-class and Spanish-speaking or bilingual Latinas /os from the La Puente area. It is this combination of cultural commonalities and connections based on shared social locations and experiences of institutional inequality within the school district that has brought them together. While they are unified in their pursuit of a common goal— the maintenance of bilingual education—among the demonstrators we find much variation. There are organizers of two distinct parent groups—Puente Parents and Parents for Quality Education—who differ in activist experience , gender, age, and ideology. By centering this display of Mexican American–Mexican immigrant political mobilization, this chapter focuses on the solidarity end of the conflict-solidarity continuum and brings together some of the key issues raised in the previous chapters. It illustrates the factors and situations that led to Mexican American–Mexican immigrant mobilization against the Hacienda–La Puente Unified School District (HLPUSD). As parents before them have, La Puente residents criticized the district for not adequately serving their community. They organized to demand that they be heard and 176 Parents and students demonstrate for bilingual education, June  that the district be held accountable. The two primarily Mexican-origin parent groups emerged whose organizers adopted power-conflict perspectives . As we have learned in the previous chapter, this worldview may strengthen the possibilities of cross-generational solidarity and collective action. By analyzing the factors that resulted in the formation of these two groups, this chapter demonstrates the simultaneity of Mexican American– Mexican immigrant unity and diversity. It also points to the influence of institutions on immigrant integration and Mexican American–Mexican immigrant group formation. In this case, we learn how residents are confronting institutions that do not address community demands and that maintain regressive policies and practices. In particular, we see the critical role that long-term Mexican immigrants are playing in organizing La Puente’s Mexican-origin community. Puente Parents and Parents for Quality Education emerged in  as a direct result of efforts by the Hacienda–La Puente Unified School Board to change some of the practices in the district. Puente Parents formed in January to challenge school closures, and Parents for Quality Education organized six months later to prevent the elimination of bilingual education . While these two groups were distinct, at times they coalesced in their struggle for bilingual education.The development of these groups illustrates how parents’ concern for the Spanish language intersected with their awareness of the unequal schooling provided to La Puente–area students and resulted in intra-ethnic solidarity and political activism among segments of the Mexican American and Mexican Immigrant Mobilization 177 Mexican-origin community. Greater analysis of the intricacies of these two groups reveals the complexity of identities among individuals of Mexican descent and the resulting intra-ethnic diversity within the community. Influenced by their respective social locations and experiences, in their struggles surrounding the school district, organizers from the two groups maintained disparate philosophies and strategies but coalesced at strategic moments. The salient factors influencing the two groups’ organizing philosophies and strategies were the life experiences, ideologies, and gender of the groups’ organizers. To explore more closely the intersection of external and cultural factors on group formation and the significance of social location (primarily race/ethnicity and gender) on group dynamics, this chapter centers on the factors and situations that resulted in the formation of Puente Parents and Parents for Quality Education. This is accomplished by locating the activities undertaken by these two groups in the lives and experiences of their organizers. Following...