This is a book review of Raza Schools: The Fight for Latino Educational Autonomy in a West Texas Borderlands Town by Jesus Jesse Esparza
In 1929, parents and community leaders formed the San Felipe Independent School District, the first and quite possibly the only completely Mexican American–controlled school district in the history of Texas.
For forty-two years, the SFISD funded, maintained, and managed their own school system. The community school was fully autonomous and free to determine the educational destiny of their Latino children. Schools were created that that were academically rigorous, and culturally relevant.
San Felipe is a barrio in Del Rio. Allow me to present a thumbnail history of Del Rio. It was originally called ”San Felipe del Rio" by the priests who were naming stuff. It means Saint Philip of the River. Philip, according to the World Wide Web is the patron saint of pastry chefs because of his role in the miracle of the feeding of the multitude. Cool! He is also the patron saint of hatters and fishermen as well as some cities, churches, and schools. What Saint Philip has to do with Southwest Rivers is something that escapes me.
The name was shortened by the United States Postal Department in 1883 to Del Rio to avoid confusion with another town called San Felipe de Austin. (I guess there was a lot of mail getting mis-delivered. Really?)
Camp San Felipe got the rest of the name. The camp was an outpost for Fort Clark in Brackettville. Fort Clark was one of those military fortifications that were constructed as a chain to protect travelers against the Native Americans.
Fort Clark was eventually closed and the settlement that grew up around the outpost became known as Barrio San Felipe. It was mostly Latino.
For decades, Texas Anglo school district officials knowingly provided Latino schoolchildren a subpar educational experience rife with institutionalized racism, including segregation, biased curricula, and prejudiced teachers.
In Del Rio, Texas, for one example, school officials required Spanish-speaking students to learn three thousand English words before entering the primary grades. Students who did not meet that criterion would be placed in remedial classrooms or segregated entirely.
Most Texas districts used their curriculum to purposefully erase Latino history, cultural heritage, and identity. The Del Rio district officials wanted to make English the only language, although, from what I have heard, they never tried to rename the Gulf of Mexico. There were some limits.
But while district officials were doing everything in their power to bar Latino schoolchildren from social and economic uplift, the Mexican American community did not stand by idly. Instead, they found ways to resist the various forms of oppression.
“July 27, 1929, marked the day when the community formed the SFISD, believed to be the only school system in Texas “organized by Mexican Americans during the Jim Crow era.” With modest experience and challenging roads ahead, they formed the first and only Mexican American–controlled independent school district in the state’s history. Because the district was majority Latino, with just a few white and Black students, it was technically a segregated organization. For the people, however, SFISD was a place where they could be free from the segregation that DRISD and every other school district in Texas imposed on Mexican American students.”
The details of staffing and funding are spelled out in the book. It wasn’t easy but it was a community effort.
Because Latinos controlled the district, they had the power to determine who administered it, who served as teachers, and how students succeeded within it.
According to Esparza, “The lesson to be learned is that when Latinos were in charge of their schools, as was the case for SFISD, Latino schoolchildren performed better, were promoted with greater frequency, graduated at steady rates, and were more likely to attend college.”
So read this book to learn the details.
PHIT especially appreciates the use of oral history in this story.
The Civil Rights in Black and Brown Oral History project housed at Texas Christian University, which was inspired by Max Krochmal, who once upon a time was a board member of PHIT.
The Voces Oral History Center in the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin.
The Institute of Oral History at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Let’s hope these oral history sources get mined even further.