The Cristal Experiment: A Chicano Struggle for Community Control

8. Revolution Through Education

8 Revolution Through Education During the golden years, from 1970 to the period in 1975 before the political rupture, a plethora of political, economic, and social changes were enacted as a consequence of the peaceful revolution. However, it was in education that the peaceful revolution scored its greatest triumphs . The second revolt had succeeded in taking control of the Crystal City Independent School District (CCISD) away from the white minority and giving it to the Mexicano majority. In general terms community control of Cristal's schools translated to empowerment and participation of parents; having Mexicanos as school administrators and teachers of Mexicano children; development of a curriculum and programs geared toward producing college graduates; and development of a mind-set among parents, students, administrators, teachers, and other school personnel that was predicated on Chicanismo. The five years that followed the second revolt produced the greatest educational change in the history of the Chicano Movement (CM). Education Before the Second Revolt RUP's educational revolution was grounded in the Winter Garden Project 's efforts to decolonize the Winter Garden area, south Texas, and ultimately Aztlan. Its plan of action was largely engineered and carried out by Jose Angel Gutierrez. Its foremost organizational goals were to achieve major educational change through political action and community control; bring democracy to the powerless Mexicano majority 217 Copyrighted Material 218 Part Three. Agenda for Change by empowering it; organize Mexicanos for their decolonization; and promote the economic empowerment of Mexicanos.1 As previous chapters have discussed, the education agenda of the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), sponsor of the Winter Garden Project, was greatly influenced by history. In writing of the educational aspects of internal colonialism sociologist Edward Murguia provides an analysis that was applicable to Cristal: "The area conquered and colonized is often rural and underdeveloped; its peasant people have few technological skills.... [The colonized] are not encouraged to become skilled, literate and educated because their chief benefit to the colonizers is to remain an abundant source of inexpensive labor. If they were to become literate and educated, they would rebel." 2 Under internal colonialism educational institutions are purveyors of the colonialists' ubiquitous ideology, which controls the mental means of production and socialization. These pedagogical processes are effective instruments for controlling the colonized. Robert Blauner alludes to the colonialists' efforts to destroy the indigenous culture of the colonized and examines the colonialists' adherence to racism grounded in ethnocentrism. Pedagogically, they use segregation and a racist curriculum that is designed to denigrate and supplant the colonized culture, language, and heritage. The result is a "subsistence education" that keeps the colonized in a state of subordination, dependence, and poverty . Murguia points out that Frantz Fanon and Albert Memmi probably did not know about the plight of Mexicanos in the United States, yet their analysis of Algeria has some application to the internal colonization of Mexicanos in Aztlan, especially as it applies to education.3 The pertinence of the internal colonial model is evident when examining Mexicanos' educational experience in Cristal as well as throughout south Texas. Historically, Mexicanos throughout south Texas were subjected to de jure segregation from 1907 (when the school district was formed) until the 1950s. The 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education formally ended de jure segregation, yet segregation persisted in south Texas until the late 1960s. Despite this oppressive climate, Mexicanos managed to make some educational progress . In 1951 only 9 percent of all who entered the first grade in the Cristal school district were graduated from high school. By 1958 that figure had increased to 18 percent.4 John Shockley provides a synopsis of the Mexicanos' educational attainment before the second revolt: A dropout rate of over eighty percent was by national standards phenomenal, and the median increase for the population over twenty-five was such that if conditions continued at the same rate of improvement, by the turn of the century most adult Mexicans still would not have graduated from the fifth grade. The figure was made all the more outrageous to Mexicans because of their 2.3 Copyrighted Material Revolution Through Education 219 years median compared to the Anglo median of 11.2 years. Concerning faculty change, the gradual increase in Spanish-surnamed teachers still left the faculty enormously unreflective of the composition of the student body. By the fall of 1968 eighty-seven percent of the student body were Mexican Americans. And...