Chicano 2

The Last Conquistador-Juan de Onate video

people that support vs oppose

he gave el paso its name- he brought spanish culture

he enslaved and killed many women men and children priest, burn down villages

acoma Indian protest his statue

part of movement that massacred 40 million poeple

had trial and found guilty-

POV of artist that was paid to make structure - they protest him and didtn let him speak-

power of art

Las Marthas

Dance for george washington birthdays

laredo

daritons?

The documentary follows the preparation for the Washington’s Birthday Celebration in Laredo, specifically the tradition of selecting young women from wealthy families to participate as “Marthas.” These girls dress as Martha Washington in an elaborate colonial-style ball that reenacts elite social traditions tied to George Washington.

The film explores how this long-standing tradition reflects class, identity, history, and social status along the United States–Mexico border. Through interviews with the girls and their families, the documentary shows how participation requires significant money, preparation, and family connections.

Director

The film was directed by Cristina Ibarra, a Chicana filmmaker known for documentaries that explore culture and identity in border communities.

Key idea about elites on the border

A major theme in the film is that economic elites on both sides of the border share more similarities with each other than with the average people in their own cities. Wealthy families in Laredo and Nuevo Laredo often:

• socialize with each other,

• share similar lifestyles and traditions,

• and have comparable economic power and influence.

Because of this shared wealth and status, they often form a cross-border elite community, which can make them socially closer to each other than to ordinary residents in their respective countries.

Luis Jiménez

Los Lagartos (The
Aligators

Former El Paso mayor Tom Lea

(father of the famous El Paso artist/photographer/journalist) had ties to the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK were incredibly powerful in El Paso in the 1920s.

KKK influence in El Paso

• Tom Lea Jr. served as mayor of El Paso from 1915–1917.

• He was a member of the Ku Klux Klan (Frontier Klan 100).

• The KKK had strong political and social influence in El Paso during the 1920s.

heritage event examined in Las Marthas

Annual George Washington Birthday Festival

Fantasy heritage

: Framing history in a simplistic manner
that overlooks/distorts important events to create a
positive (and marketable) myth with the effect of
misrepresenting people and/or events (McWilliams,
1990)

idea that tourism venues and governments in the Southwest (actually nearly everywhere) often frame the past in an incomplete and "sanitized" manner. Some refer to this as selling food, fun, and fiesta. This happens because those who profit from tourisn fear that complex representations of the past - filled with exploitation and murder - will not sell. 

Hegemony:

Social influence and the competition
between various social segments to make the status quo
appear (un)natural (Hall, 1996). Also, the scheme or plot
used by elites to gain consent of the colonized or
governed

The XII Travelers of the Southwest

What is the name of the multi-statue historical memorial series critiqued in the readings for excluding Mexican American personalities.

This is an inexcusible omission because El Paso is 80% "Hispanic" with a vast majority of that category being people of Mexican ancestry. 

XII Travelers Project

The XII Travelers Memorial of the Southwest is a series of statues placed in El Paso representing historical figures connected to the region.

It reflects fantasy heritage because it mainly celebrates explorers, conquistadors, and settlers, presenting a heroic version of history while minimizing Indigenous suffering and colonial violence.

Christina Ibarra

Question 13

Which Chicana filmmaker directed Las Marthas? 

Real women have curves

Ana- growing up wants more of life

family holds her back from school

Cholo

bandido was the stereotype from which this evolved

was built on the stereotype of what negative preexisting Mexican stereotype

Chicana/o/x

- an American of Mexican descent concerned with social justice. One does
NOT have to be a radical or an activist to adopt this ethnic label and identity

Stolen Education

The film documents how Mexican-American students in the Driscoll Independent School District in South Texas were systematically discriminated against in school. It focuses on a group of eight children who eventually testified in a federal court case to challenge these practices and bring attention to educational inequality. The documentary also explores how these policies affected their lives and how their case helped expose racism in the education system.

Why many Mexican children were 20 or 21 when they graduated

Mexican-American children were forced to repeat first grade for three years, regardless of their academic ability. Schools divided first grade into levels such as “beginner,” “low-first,” and “high-first.” Because of this policy, even students who did well academically were delayed several years in school, which meant they often finished high school at 20 or 21 years old instead of 18 or 19.

How they were treated

Overall, the students were treated unfairly and with discrimination:

• They were segregated from white students.

• Teachers and administrators assumed they were less intelligent or incapable of learning English.

• They were often punished or humiliated for speaking Spanish.

• The school system had low expectations for their academic success.
  This created an environment where Mexican-American students were treated as second-class students in the education system.

The two main filmmakers of the documentary are:

• Rudy Luna

• Enrique Alemán Jr.

One of them, Enrique Alemán Jr., is a professor of education, and his mother Lupe Alemán was one of the Mexican-American students who experienced the racist school policy and participated in the court case.

Taking Back the Schools

Overall premise:
The documentary explains the 1968 student walkouts in Los Angeles, when thousands of Mexican-American high school students left their classrooms to protest discrimination and unequal education in public schools.

Key locale:
The protests took place mainly in East L.A. at schools like Abraham Lincoln High School, Garfield High School, and Roosevelt High School.

What students were demanding:

• Better school facilities and resources

• More Mexican-American teachers and administrators

• The right to speak Spanish without punishment

• Courses about Mexican-American history and culture

• Fair treatment and higher expectations from teachers

Who Sal Castro was:
Sal Castro was a Mexican-American teacher at Lincoln High School who encouraged students to stand up for equal educational opportunities and helped support the walkouts. He became an important mentor and advocate for the student movement.

Stand and Deliver

The film tells the true story of Jaime Escalante, a dedicated math teacher who begins teaching at Garfield High School in Los Angeles. Many of the students are Mexican-American and are often stereotyped as unlikely to succeed academically. Escalante challenges those expectations by pushing his students to work harder and enroll in Advanced Placement (AP) Calculus, a college-level mathematics course.

Through strict discipline, encouragement, and long hours of study (including before and after school), his students eventually pass the difficult AP Calculus exam, proving that they are capable of high academic achievement.

Actor who played Escalante:
Escalante is portrayed by Edward James Olmos, who received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his performance.

• His success with students gained national attention and challenged stereotypes about Latino students.

• After his achievements became widely known, Escalante faced negative backlash, including death threats, from people who opposed or resented his success.

The film emphasizes themes of determination, educational equity, cultural pride (e.g., Escalante connects math to Mayan heritage), and the power of high expectations to overcome systemic barriers.

Nancy Aguirre – “A Stranger in Charleston” Working-class academic

A working-class academic is a scholar who comes from a working-class family and does not have the same financial resources or professional networks as many other academics. For example, someone whose parents worked as a housekeeper or taxi driver cannot rely on economic support or influential connections in the same way as someone whose parents might be professionals like doctors or principals.
These challenges are often greater for people of color.

About Nancy Aguirre

• She is a first-generation borderlands scholar.

• Her research focuses on the United States–Mexico border.

• She studies and writes about borderlands culture, identity, and inequality.

Meeting few people with similar backgrounds

Aguirre explains that she has only met a handful of women with similar working-class and borderlands backgrounds in academia.
This makes her feel:

• Isolated

• Out of place

• Like she does not fully belong in academic spaces

Culture shocks she experienced in Charleston Some examples include:

• Strong racial and class divisions

• Elite academic culture that assumes wealth and privilege

• Social expectations and manners that felt unfamiliar\

The Singular Woman of Color Predicament=

Gentrification has pushed many of Charleston’s minority groups and immigrants to neighboring towns, including North Charleston, Summerville, Goose Creek, and John’s Island

I accepted the offer from the University of Chicago, though I would
only be able to finance my studies with student loans

as many Chicana scholars have written, living a life of
‘oppositional consciousness’ (Sandoval 1991) generates tension and even rejection from our
families for threatening machismo and not submitting to passive domestici

Economic studies published since the Great Recession calculate that up to half of U.S.
households have little or no savings (Bloom 2017) and only forty-seven percent of Americans
have enough savings to cover a $400 emergency (Gabler 201

Cepeda et al. – Childhood Trauma Study

• The study was conducted in El Paso.

• The researchers measured trauma using the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Scale.

• The research was led by Alice Cepeda and colleagues.

Main finding:
Their results supported the idea that childhood trauma does not automatically lead young men to become “cholos.” While trauma can affect people’s lives, it does not determine that someone will join gangs or adopt that identity.

Pérez & Ortega – “Juan de Oñate in El Paso

Juan de Oñate

• Juan de Oñate was a Spanish colonizer in the Southwest.

• He led the Acoma Massacre, where about 800 Acoma Pueblo people were killed, including 300 women and children.

• During his lifetime he was tried in court for:

  • the Acoma massacre

  • adultery

  • cruelty toward his own colonists.

Key concepts

Hegemony
The dominance of one cultural or social group over others, where the dominant group’s values and historical narratives become accepted as normal or legitimate.

Fantasy heritage
A romanticized and selective version of history that glorifies colonial figures and the past while ignoring violence against Indigenous or marginalized groups.

El Paso high school mascots (problematic examples)

Some high schools in El Paso use imagery connected to Spanish conquest, which can reflect fantasy heritage, such as:

• Coronado High School (named after Francisco Vásquez de Coronado).

Border geopolitical space

El Paso and Ciudad Juárez form a binational border region where two countries, cultures, and economies are closely interconnected.

Important demographic fact

• El Paso is about 80% Mexican American, yet no regular public high school in the city is named after a Mexican American figure, highlighting issues of representation and historical memory.

Deborah M. Warnock

outlines themes in the ‘lived experiences’ of working-class academics

Alienation
Lack of cultural capital
Encountering stereotypes and microaggressions
Experiencing survivor guilt and the imposter syndrome
Struggling to pass in a middle-class culture that values ego and
networkin

Tortilla Soup

food serves several important roles in the family’s life. The weekly dinners prepared by Martin bring the family together, reflect their Mexican cultural heritage, help the characters communicate feelings they struggle to express, and sometimes create tension when disagreements surface during meal