
          Hispanics Struggle for Parity in Texas
          By Davenport, ElaineElaine Davenport
          Vol. 10, No. 4, 1988, pp. 11-13
          
          
            By the year 2010, Hispanics will be a majority of the population in
Texas and will be more numerous than any other ethnic group, whites
included, in California.
            In sheer numbers and in buying power, Hispanics have growing
clout. In America as a whole, the Hispanic market is now estimated at
nineteen million and is expected to reach fifty-five million within
thirty years. And in politics, both Democrats and Republicans count
Hispanics as a potential "swing" vote in Texas,
California, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois in the November
elections.
            Yet Hispanics still suffer from discrimination in education, jobs
and housing, and are currently launching widespread struggles for
equality, much as blacks did in the 1950s and 1960s.
            The struggle is especially evident in south Texas, where Hispanics
are seeking a federal court order to make more state money available
for higher education. The Mexican American Legal Defense and
Educational Fund claims deliberate neglect exists when just 3 per cent
of the state's higher education budget serves 9 per cent of the
population.
            Texas's important universities are all located north of an
east-west line running through San Antonio. South of that line are
just two little-known four-year universities-where faculty salaries
start at about $16,000 a year-and a long list of NO's: No accredited
medical schools, no accredited law schools, no accredited health
science schools, and no doctoral program except in bilingual
education. By contrast, cities such as Dallas and Houston are overrun
with degree programs.
            Equally grim statistics exist in other social categories in south
Texas: Jobs-for the past two decades, counties in south Texas have led
the nation in unemployment. Poverty-federal statistics put residents
of south Texas among 

the poorest of the poor in the U.S., worse off
than residents of Appalachia. Housing-researchers say more than 30
percent of the region's housing is substandard, citing the so-called
"colonias," the make-shift slums that have
sprouted along the Mexican-American border.
            For now, higher education is where Hispanics are demanding
equality. Dr. Juliet Garcia, president of Texas Southmost College in
Brownsville, says the formula for dividing the annual $4.5 billion
state expense for higher education has shortchanged south Texas.
          
          
            Equal Opportunity Discrimination
            "Everyone who lives in south Texas is being discriminated
against without regard to ethnicity, or economic status, because we
simply don't have the diversity of programs available in other parts
of the state," says Garcia.
            Students know there is bias: "A lot of people are forced into
going to a vocational school because they don't have the money to go
somewhere else. They just settle for that and the cycle
continues," says Martha Luna, a senior at Pan American University
in Edinburg. Ms. Luna will put off going north to medical school
because neither she nor her family can afford both school fees and
away-from-home living expenses.
            Anyone with a high school diploma or the equivalent can apply to
Pan American, and many rely on the university's Learning Assistance
Center for remedial help in reading, math and composition. Half of
last year's nearly 10,000 students used the Center. Of those, 34 per
cent were from homes with less than $9,000 annual income; 82 per cent
were first-generation college students, whose parents had attended an
average of 8.1 years of school; and 46 per cent said English was their
second language.
            "That tells you our job is a tremendous one," says Dr. Sylvia
Lujan, director of the Center.
            The lawsuit filed last December is part of a two-pronged attack on
the decades-old problem. During its last session, the Texas State
Senate passed a resolution asking the state's two most prominent
universities-the University of Texas and Texas A&M University-to
investigate ways of improving education for their poorer cousins to
the south. Discussions between officials from north and south have
ranged from bringing Texas A&I University in Kingsville and Pan
American into the state-wide systems of UT and Texas A&M, and
collaboration on improved programs for the south Texas colleges,
including Laredo State University and Corpus Christi State
University.
            None of this sounds very promising to some Hispanic leaders, who
have heard most of it before and now are trying to get something
concrete done. In May, a joint legislative committee set up because of
the Senate resolution heard testimony from Kenneth Ashworth, State
Commissioner of Higher Education. He said that he would take steps to
get the next state legislature to appropriate money for new programs
at south Texas colleges.
            State Senator Carlos Truan, who co-chairs the committee, made a
blistering plea for action now: "In my 20th year in the
legislature, I'm serving notice that we're not going to take it any
more and we want specific answers to the problems of south Texas. So
far we get less than half the per capita funding for higher education
in south Texas. We don't have any professional schools. We have only
one doctoral program and that being fourteen years ago, and we are
demanding equity from you, the Commissioner of Higher Education, and
the board you represent. We want to be fairly and equitably treated in
the distribution of money, facilities and programs."
            It is no coincidence that the squeeze is on at a time when national
politics is close to the top of everyone's agenda. The Democratic
presidential candidates held one of their debates in south Texas, in
what is considered an important Democratic voter stronghold. And in
June Democratic frontrunner Michael Dukakis stopped in San Antonio for
the funeral of Willie Velasquez, 44, the man credited with igniting an
explosion of Hispanic political power over the last fifteen years.
            Velasquez, who died of cancer, was head of the Southwest Voter
Registration and Education Project, based in San Antonio. Much as
Martin Luther King Jr. strove to put blacks on the political map in
the 1960s, Velasquez began in 

the early 1970s, through sheer hustle
and organizational abilities, to get Hispanics registered to
vote. Over the past decade, the number of Hispanic voters in Texas has
more than doubled, and Velasquez's work in California has borne
similar fruit.
          
          
            A Critical Core of Lawmakers
            Slowly, more Hispanics have been elected to office. The twenty-five
Hispanics now in the Texas House and Senate make up about 15 percent
of the 181 total members, whereas twenty years ago there was a bare
handful. And of Texas's twenty-seven members of the U.S. House of
Representatives, four are Hispanic.
            "Hispanic members of the Legislature now form a critical core of
lawmakers who are forcing the state's two premier universities to
include south Texas in their plans for the future," writes Jesse
Trevino, a columnist for the Austin American-Statesman newspaper. "The votes Velasquez has harnessed have been the key to the turnaround in the academic and economic fortunes of this area of Texas."
            Nationally, more than four million voters are considered Hispanic,
a generic category for persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban and
other Latin origin. That is still less than 5 per cent of all American
voters, but their potential influence is great because they are
concentrated in six states.
            Sheer numbers are making Hispanics more visible and powerful, but
there is also growing fear and suspicion of them. "Anglos are more
scared of Hispanics now than they were of blacks in the fifties and
sixties," says columnist Trevino. "We've got a different
culture, religion, and we're slow to assimilate-to become
American," says Trevino. "There's never been so large a
population that's bilingual and has a bond with a potential
enemy-Mexico."
            In a recent column, Trevino wrote about the problem of Anglo
backlash. A press release from Baylor, the large Baptist university in
Waco, announced that Texas could be facing a situation similar to what
South Africa is going through if projected population estimates
hold.
            "There are rising tensions among Hispanics, many of who believe
they have not been treated fairly and will continue to be treated
unfairly," the press release continued. "Much of the state's
new population in the next ten to twenty years will not speak English
but Spanish....The day is quickly coming when the Anglo Texan, the
native Texan, will himself be a minority."
          
          
            A Fear of Two Texases
            Alarmed, Trevino called the professor who had been quoted, and
learned that the statements had been mangled by an energetic writer
from the university's information office. "I stopped worrying about
it," wrote Trevino. "But driving home that day, it occurred to
me that someone did write it, and that someone believes that kind of
future awaits Texas....The fear, of course, is that the state is on
its way to becoming two separate Texases."
            "The old ethnic bugaboo refused to die," says
Trevino. "The fear is that now we have the numbers, something could
set us off end we'd do un-American things."
            The numbers, as it happens, are elusive whether non-citizens as
well as citizens are included. "This is a new distinction,"
says Trevino, "and reflects what people fear most about us-our
sheer growth in number. If you count non-citizens, Texas will gain
representation in the U.S. Congress and get more federal money. Yet
there is a reluctance to recognize reality."
            Other evidence of fear and loathing among the Anglo population
includes a negative reaction to funding for bilingual education and an
overwhelming vote in favor of a non-binding measure on the Republican
primary ballot in March to declare English as the state's official
language.
            Just at a time when Hispanics could use strong direction, one of
the most important leaders, Willie Velasquez, has died
prematurely. And Henry Cisneros, the mayor of San Antonio and widely
considered the most important and visible Hispanic in the country, has
put his political prospects on hold due to personal reasons which
include the birth of a son with a congenital heart defect.
            Cisneros was considered a strong contender for the 1990 governor's
race until he ruled himself out. And with that exit went much of the
visibility of the Hispanic plight. Cisneros was a constant reminder
that there is a tide of Hispanics who are good for the country and who
spend money but who also need a good education, jobs and decent
housing. Cisneros's Harvard education and matinee-idol good looks made
him and thus fellow Hispanics more acceptable and less of a threat to
Anglos than they might otherwise have been.
            "The Hispanic issue is still largely invisible," says
Trevino. "That just sets us up for a misunderstanding on where we
should go as a state. With half our kids dropping out of school, what
will the state have to look forward to when we're in the majority?
There's going to be, and already is, a lot of anger on all
sides."
            That same thought is uppermost in the mind of Reynaldo Garcia, who
became the first Hispanic to serve as a federal judge when appointed
in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. "Education is the only thing
to get the people out of the cycle of poverty, but if it isn't close
to home, they won't have it," he says. "If we're going to be in
the majority, you'd better educate us." 
          
          
            Elaine Davenport is a reporter and producer who divides her time between Austin, Texas, and London, England
          
        