Oral History Interview with José Cárdenas,
1998.
Interviewee:
José Cárdenas
Interviewer: José Angel
Gutiérrez, Ph.D., J.D.
Transcribers: Karen
McGee and José Angel Gutiérrez
Date of
Interview: December 10, 1997
Location of
Interview: San Antonio, Texas
Number of Transcript Pages:
104
Cite this interview as Oral History Interview with José Cárdenas,
1998, by José Angel Gutiérrez. CMAS No. 69
José Cárdenas
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
December 10, 1997. We are in San Antonio in the
offices of the founder and former executive director of IDRA in
San Antonio, Jose Angel Cardenas. Why don't we
start off by you telling me what IDRA is, how you conceptualized it
and why you did it?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
IDRA is a non-profit organization dedicated to the
improvement of education opportunities for, for children. It has been around
since 1973 in its corporate form. It was a, a loosely formed organization even
before that, but as, as a corporate institution, it has been in
Texas since 1973. Twenty-five years this coming April. One of
the reasons for the founding of IDRA was my involvement in the
Rodriguez versus San Antonio Independent School
District school finance case in federal court. We had had a lot of success
in the court case. I was superintendent of schools, of the Edgewood
Independent School District at the time and won that case in the lower
district court and which found all of those, the systems of, of school finance
in the United States, in the various states unconstitutional.
Certainly in the state of Texas and by implication just about
all but one or two of the other systems of school finance. The resources
available for the education for children varied. There were great disparities
and we were . . . I was superintendent of the poorest school district out of
sixteen hundred in the state of Texas. And I just found it very
difficult to offer a first rate educational program to the predominantly
Mexican
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2
American population of the school district with the amount
of resources available under the state system of school finance. We won the
court case and, and then, and then, in 1971, December the 23rd and the state of
Texas appealed it to the United States Supreme Court.
And it, much to my regret, it was reversed on a five to four vote in March of
1973. During all of the period of litigation, I was continuously informed by
the political leadership of the state of Texas and the
educational leadership of the state that they were not opposed to school
finance equity and, and equitable resources for all children. They objected to
the federal government ramming it down their throats. And I had been given
ample assurance that if the case was either dropped by us or it if was reversed
by the Supreme Court that they would establish an equitable system of school
finance for the state of Texas on, on their own volition. Well, in 1973 after
the reversal of Rodriguez and the commitments that I
had from the educational and political leadership, it, it, it looked like it
was time to write a new system for the state of Texas that would
provide equitable education. I resigned as superintendent of the Edgewood
School District at the urging of some financial supporters from some of
our biggest foundations: Ford Foundation, Carnegie
Foundation, and the National Urban Coalition in order to
establish a small organization which primary purpose would be to write a system
of school finance for the state of Texas or at least provide the
advocacy for an equitable system
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3
in, in Texas
considering the commitments that had been made. It is ironic that twenty-eight
years later we still don't have an equitable system in the state of
Texas. It is much improved, but it is still not equitable. From
the period of 1973 through the Edgewood litigation, which was litigation
similar to Rodriguez, but in the state court, very little progress was made in
the equalizing of educational dollars. Very little empathy. Yes, the
Edgewood School District and the Lowell School Districts
were given additional funds, but at the same time, the wealthier school
district had access to even greater amount of funds so that the disparities
were growing continuously. At that time, there was, and still is, at least a
seven hundred to one relationship between market values or taxable values in
the wealthier school districts and the, and the poorer school districts in the
state of Texas, the biggest disparity of any of the fifty
states. The organization was funded, founded in 1973 and I was employed as a,
as the executive director of, of the organization through the incorporation and
early stages of the organization. As more funds were being allocated for
education, not necessarily more equitable, but more funds were allocated, we
got concerned with what the school systems were, were doing with the additional
funds. So, we got into the area of curriculum and instruction and expanded the
basis of the organization. Originally it had been incorporated as Texans
for Educational Excellence. We changed the name of the organization
to Inter-cultural Development
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4
Research Association,
IDRA, and expanded it's activities to include such things as
advocacy for students in the instructional program as well as in the resources
which were allocated in support of these programs. We got into the area of
desegregation and established a desegregation assistance center for a, a number
of states for their federal region. We, we did a lot in the development of
early childhood education programs. We got very heavily into bi-lingual
education, litigation, and legislation, and have continued to expand our base
doing just about everything that can be done in order to improve educational
opportunities for children. We are interested in all children. I have, we tend
to concentrate most of our work on the children who have the least advocacy in
schools which are the disadvantaged, the minorities, limited English
proficient, immigrant, migrant. The, the school populations that have not
received a lot of full support either inside or outside the educational
community. At the present time the organization employs almost fifty people. We
have a great track record of having participated in a lot of litigation, having
participated in the formulation of policy, and the implantation of legislation
and providing technical assistance, research, materials to school systems that
enroll substantial numbers of the special populations that are enumerate,
enumerated previously.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
What is the, the operating budget now of, of this organization and
the staffing pattern?
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5
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
We operate under an annual budget of about five, six
million dollars a year and we have forty five to fifty professional employees.
Not professional, but all types of employees. It has an executive director and
then we have activities in four areas. One of them is research and evaluation,
very strong component. Then, we have training and technical assistance. We have
materials development. And we have the assimilation of information. There is a
loose type of organizational structure because we also organize by programmatic
activity, depending on the types of services that we have. The funding of the
organization, we see, receive some funds from foundations. We receive federal
grants and contracts. We have state contracts. And we, we also receive an
extensive amount of corporate funding. And the remainder of the income comes
from the, what we call, consumer services, and that is the sale of materials
and, and training and technical assistance to school systems.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
You retired some year's
back. Who was your successor? Or who is the current CEO?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
In, in 1992, after twenty
years, I, I retired as executive director of the organization and the board
appointed Dr. Maria Del Refugio Robeldo Montecel, commonly
known as Cuca Montecel, as executive director of the
organization. She has a doctorate degree from the University of
Wisconsin at Milwaukee and she has served as executive
director these last five years. At that time, the board of directors appointed
me
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6
director emeritus for life. And I have been working on a limited
schedule, mostly with administrative matters and special projects in areas that
I am most familiar with such as school finance equity, bi-lingual education,
multicultural education. I have written four books during this period, which
have been distributed rather extensively. We have four division directors that,
that handle the operation of the affairs of the organization.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Is one of those last
books your, your autobiography, My Spanish Speaking Left
Foot or something like that?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
That's right. The last book that I wrote that was just
published a few months ago is My Spanish Speaking Left
Foot published by IDRA and they also publish all the materials.
And it deals with the concept of multiculturalism and, and it is
autobiographical in that I dictated how I grew up in the city of
Laredo with completely bi-lingual, multicultural . . . And that
title indicates that I had one foot in the United States and the
other foot in, in Mexico and spoke both language, languages
fluently. And the book kind of highlights the advantages of bi-lingualism and
the advantages of multiculturalism. I also get into indigenous populations in
Mexico. Some of the archeology of Mexico, the
United States, and focus on, on the big Hispanic values and the
advantages of some of these values. The close family unity, the, the supportive
role of the family, things of this nature that are, are vastly different from
what we find in this country. The
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7
other books that I have written, I
wrote one on school finance reform in Texas and it depicts twenty eight years
of ideate activity in the financing of the public schools of, of Texas. And I
wrote a book on multicultural education, which is a compilation of, of articles
that I wrote over almost a thirty year period, that deals with various topics
such as early childhood education, bi-lingual education, multicultural
education, testing, a whole variety of, of educational issues in, in tactic,
impacted upon the special populations that we have advocated for. I had one
other book, All Pianos Have Keys, and that is also
semi-autobiographical, but it is a collection of anecdotes and stories dealing
with personal life, dealing with education and my experiences in education. I
have been an educator for forty-eight years and, and also some, very few
articles dealing with management and educational practice.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
And you are threatening
to retire again?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
And I am threatening to retire. In fact, I, I should be
retired by the end of this month and will be available as director of merits to
the administrative staff of the organization for mostly administrative matters.
Perhaps some special issues, concerns, very much like I have been doing during
the last five years except that I will not be maintaining office hours and will
be coming in just for specific purposes.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What are you going to go do?
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8
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Well, I think I
am going to try to enjoy life. I, I play golf and, and, and I play a lot of
golf. I think eventually, I think my wife is going to drop me off at the golf
club early in the morning. And I am going to play golf and, and swim in the
swimming pool and get in the Jacuzzi and take a, a steam bath, eat several
meals there, and then she picks me up in the evening and then tucks me in bed.
I intend to do some more traveling. I have done a lot of traveling both in this
country and in, in many other countries. I intend to do some more of that.
Every time I visited somewhere, I ended up writing about the educational system
and, and other social issues. Comparing the United States and,
and the other countries in health and in, in, in education and economic systems
and so forth. And I have published quite a few articles on the educational
system in the Soviet Union, when it existed. On Guatemala,
Ecuador, Spain and, and Peru and,
and other countries that, that I have visited. But I will be, I may do a little
bit of writing. I hope not too much because I enjoy writing, but publishing is
very difficult and painful process. But I will also be spending more time with
family and, and just taking it easy.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Any prospects of you teaching university? |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
No, no, no. I have taught at
many universities and I even did a one-year guest slot at the University
of Texas at, at San Antonio. I have taught at the
University of Texas at Austin. I have taught at
Our Lady of the Lake and I have taught out of San Diego State
University,
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9
Chicago, University of, Chicago State
University, and, and others. And I don't think that I would care to, to
work a full time at, at a university. I think that I have played advocacy role
and have advocated and sometimes even confronted state officials and, and
policy makers and I would think that I would function under the confines of a
public institution, elbow a private institution for that matter.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Returning to school
finance. Why has that remained such an elusive goal?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
It's, it's a very elusive
goal because we have in the United State and have had since it's
beginning an illegal system of education. We do pay lip service to the concept
that all people are equal and all children are equal, but in practice some
children are more equal than others. We have a, a system that, that assists the
privileged people to have, for their children, a privileged education so that
the distribution of resources is such that people of high wealth, of the rich
and the famous get very good educational services for their children. Those
that are not so rich or not so famous or important to the social system get a
very inferior education. In fact, as superintendent of the poorest school
district in the state of Texas, I saw and, and experienced that
as a teacher, as a principal, as a superintendent educational conditions in, in
low belt school districts like Edgewood and, and others like it.
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10
Deplorable educational systems just as bad as some of the poorer
educational systems that I have visited in undeveloped countries.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
We will incorporate by
reference the material especially if we can afford to buy them or, or you will
donate them to your archive because this is your archive. So you can make
reference to, to that and not be repetitive because I know that you have to
leave.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
But tell us
about that career track. When did you decide to be a teacher; who and what
prompted you to go to college; your educational career? You were one of,
perhaps five Chicano superintendents when I remember meeting you at the first
time way back when. That, that's almost incredible to realize that there is
some, what, eighteen hundred school districts perhaps in the state?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
At that time, yes.
Well, I have always liked teaching and in school I was a relatively good
student. Perhaps not a superior student, but I was a good student. And I liked
my teachers. And growing up in a city like Laredo I counted many
teachers that are exceptionally good with such strange names as Hernandez and
Garcia and Uribe and, and Gonzales, De la Garza. And I, I thought they were the
greatest people in, in the world. They taught me a lot. They taught me well.
And I came out of the public schools of the city of Laredo with a fairly good
education. I was very young at the time. I was only fifteen years old when I
graduated from high school and . . .
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11
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
How did you do that? |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
well, I skipped a few grades.
In those days they didn't have special education, so I guess they just pushed
me up to a higher grade to get rid of me. But I, I only spent about six weeks
in the first grade; they put me in the second grade because I had learned to
read in Spanish before I started school.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Did you go to a
barrio school, what used to be those
la escuelita del barrio
(little neighborhood school) before?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
No, no, there were no
escuelita del barrio (neighborhood school)
in the barrio .
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
In Laredo?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Some of the
nuns had little escuelita
(school) but no, I'm a member of a fairly large Hispanic family and
I am the fourth out of five, five children and my three older brothers and
sisters always kind of took care of me and, and sat me down while they were
doing their homework. And I was very interested in their books and they started
reading to me. And I started following along. And, and we received in Laredo,
several Spanish language newspapers and I liked to read the cartoons and the
comics and the articles. And by the time that I started school, at the age of
six, I could read fairly fluently in Spanish and this is the same rationale as
bi-lingual education programs. All I had to do when I started the first grade
was to apply the decoding skills, which is what reading is, to the, to the
English language material
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12
as I learned English. And, and, and was
way ahead of my peers. And they finally decided that I could do second grade
work and the basil of readers in, in, in English were much easier than the
material I was reading in the newspapers and, and books in Spanish, so they put
me in the second grade. And then, I skipped the sixth grade. From fifth grade
they promoted me to the seventh grade, and then, during the war years I skipped
the eleventh grade and went from the fifth grade . . . Well, I finished high
school in three years of taking a couple of courses in the summer and was able
to graduate when I was only fifteen years old. I enrolled at the
University of Texas at Austin. And I was a mediocre student there at
the University of Texas at Austin mostly because of two factors. One of them, I
was very, very much interested in, in the growing civil rights or, or just
birthing civil rights movement. Very interested in social issues. Second, very
limited financial resources. My daddy had a large family, very small income,
and the amount that he could help me was very, very limited and I spent
probably more hours a week working in order to be able to afford the school
than I did at school or school activities per se. But I did graduate and the
only thing I was reluctant to go into teaching. I wanted to go into teaching,
part of my family wanted me to go into medicine, the other part of the family
wanted me to go into journalism because of traditional family activities in
history. I wanted to go into teaching and when they passed the 1949, the
Gilbert-Aiken legislation
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13
that reformed education in Texas and
increased teacher's salaries to the unbelievable amount of two thousand, four
hundred dollars a year, I opted to go into teaching. And, and, and did teach
starting in the year 1950 for the sum of two thousand, four hundred dollar,
which was more than probably any teacher had ever made in the state of Texas
before as, as, as a teacher.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
How old were you? |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
I was nineteen years old.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What
prompted you to go to UT Austin, and not, say the community college?
Was it already in existence in Laredo?
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
No? A & I?
That was certainly in existence.
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
It was in . . . |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
St. Mary's, that many
South Texas people do?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
At St. Mary's, I couldn't afford those, a
private institution. It had to be a state institution. It was hard enough to go
to school in a public institution. I, I considered, at that time the three
dominant; well actually, there are only two dominant universities. There was
the University of Texas at Austin, the most prestigious university
in Texas. The other one was Texas A & M and the
other one was Texas A & I. I wasn't particularly interested in
Texas A & I. I think the same disparities of funding that you
find in the elementary and, and secondary schools in Texas, you
find among the institutions of higher
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14
education. This is why
LULAC filed suit in, in the Richards case
and, and, and won the case where it was ascertained that there were great
disparities in, in funding of higher education. Texas A & I was
a pretty diverse, there wasn't even a community college in San
Antonio, in, in Laredo, I mean. There was no community
college in Laredo, let alone a four-year university and if you
wanted to be educated you packed your bags and you went out of town.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Where did
you live in Austin and where did you work?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
I, I lived at boarding houses
mostly or rooming houses. There were some Mexican Americans and, and other
Hispanics in, in Austin and there were very few of us and we
kind of stuck together. Not necessarily that we were segregated, I think that
we were just not very welcome in many areas of the university and activities
and we kind of banded together in the house where I lived. I think every one of
the students that lived there was Hispanic.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Who were some of those? |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Rafael
Flores, Jesse Trevino, we had Carlos
Bazan, Juan Lujan.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Duheim or Lujan? |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Lujan. Dr. Juan
Lujan. People that are fairly prominent in their communities now.
Lauro Garza, Dr., Arnulfo Oliviera from
Brownsville, a, a whole bunch of, of students from South
Texas, mostly South Texas, all Hispanic and mostly Mexican American.
And we provided support for each other. We assisted each other with
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homework and assignments and course-work and so forth. The work was not very
prestigious. I worked my freshman year, for a whole year, at Renfro
Drugs on the Drag and Guadalupe Street as a soda jerk and, and, and but
mostly as, as a soda jerk. And, and, and made about fifty cents an hour which
went a long way to assist me in, in financing my college education. The second
year I got a job as an apprentice carpenter and built a lot of housing in the,
around the university area, worked with a contractor and did everything from
tying steel for the foundation to finishing the roof in, in, in the houses.
Then the third year, I got a, a very good job as a translator for the
University of Texas radio station. They were doing a whole bunch of
health programs. I remember the name of the program,
Para Su Mejor Salud (For Your Better
Health). And it dealt with getting kids vaccinated for small pox and, and other
illnesses and encouraged them to see a doctor and so forth. They were health
programs, short, short regular health programs and I would get English language
scripts translated into Spanish and I even performed in quite a number of them.
And they had so many of those scripts that I could just do as much work as I
wanted to and receive really during my junior and senior year quite a bit of,
of money for that. I did other jobs. I did a lot of tutoring, particularly in
the areas of, of Spanish and math, science, and there were always a lot of
fraternity boys that needed a lot of assistance. And I also did some
translation of some of the required readings in
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16
Spanish and
received small amounts. I also did quite a bit of baby-sitting in the
Austin community when I was a student at the University of
Texas and it provided a much better study environment after I put the
kids to bed. And many of the people that I baby-sat for were college professors
and they had very well stocked libraries and, and were very useful to me for
studying purposes while I was earning money as a baby-sitter. I, I finally,
when I graduated, I, I, I was still working for the radio station at the
University of Texas, but then decided to go back home to
Laredo.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Was there a Laredo Club in existence when you went to
college?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Yes,
there was.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Tell me about that. Did you join or you participate? |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
I not only participated, I
was president at one time of the Laredo Club at the University
of Texas. There were quite a few students from Laredo. As
I said, Laredo had no college and, and a lot of us went there.
We had considered and, and person that went to Texas A & M, I
had been encouraged to go to Texas A & M until some of the
graduated Aggies came by to recruit me and I decided to go to University
of Texas at Austin. I thought there were a little gung-ho for my taste.
And really it was about the only feasible choice, the most prestigious
university in the state of Texas. I think it still is. And, and,
and a very good university. And we did form the Laredo Club and must
of had, oh, had at one point, fifty, sixty, seventy members.
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|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What did it
do?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Well, we,
we kind of addressed educational issues at the university. We addressed other
social issues and believe it or not, we did a lot of fund raising and provided
scholarships for other students from Laredo to attend the University of
Texas. Judge Abram Rodriguez, for instance, he was the
first recipient of a, of a one thousand dollar scholarship for the
University of Texas at Austin. The money being supplied by the
Laredo Club of the University of Texas. And, and a
thousand dollars may not seem like a lot, but consider that in those days some
of the scholarships that were awarded at graduation were five dollar
scholarship. And a twenty five-dollar was considered a large scholarship.
Certainly providing the students with a thousand dollars for a year of study
was almost unheard of at the time. And the Laredo Club continued to
provide assistance. We also became mentors for other people from Laredo wanting
to go to college. They would come by and we would, before they even enrolled in
a system, at finding housing, of assisting them in, in, in the articulation
process, and then mentor them in course-work and provide a lot of assistance in
determining majors and, and interpreting the requirements and so forth.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Have you
ever thought about why your home town and the students who you met from there
had these clubs in almost every college and
Page:
18
do they ever come
together as a state night Laredo Club group or nationwide Laredo Club group?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
I, I don't
know. But they, you are right that it appears that there is a Laredo
Club for Notre Dame and, and Laredo and certainly there is a
Laredo Club for Texas A & M and the University
of Texas.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
There was one at A & I when I went to school. |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
The population was
very cohesive. You come from a small town and you know everybody. Incidentally,
when I went to the University of Texas and being fifteen years old,
my mother was adamant that I, that I could not go because she would not allow
me to, to travel to Austin and stay in Austin by myself. On the
other hand, as I said, there was no college in Laredo. So I
faced the prospect of not being able to enroll until my mother deemed that I
was old enough to be able to take care of myself. A member of the Laredo Club
at the University of Texas at Austin, Rafael Flores, very
respected, very brilliant student who, who had been one of the outstanding
graduates of, of the year before, was at the University of Texas and he went to
talk to my mother. And believe it or not, my mother gave me permission to go
the University of Texas provided that I stayed at the same house where Rafael
was staying. And Rafael promised my mother that, that, that he would see to it
that I took a bath and brushed my teeth and changed clothes and, and did all
those things that mothers supervise their children on. And, and believe it or
not, Rafael took it very seriously.
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19
Not very long ago Rafael and I
were over in New York City and I was having, we were having
dinner and I ordered a second scotch and soda and Rafael says "You know,
that's, you had one before, and now you, this is your second one here. That's
three scotch and sodas. You are drinking too much. " And he says "And
I noticed that you were smoking a while ago. " He says, "And you use
a lot of cuss words. " And I said, "Rafael, get off my back. What's
the matter with you? " He says, "Well, I promised your mother I was
going to take care of you. " I said, "Rafael, that was sixty years,
fifty five years ago. You know, that was fifty years ago. "
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Enough is enough. |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Enough is enough.
And Rafael says, "A promise is a promise and I told your mother I would
look after you. "
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
To the grave. |
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Yeah. Here I was sixty years old and, and Rafael was
still chewing me out for drinking too much, for smoking, for using cuss words,
and so forth. Thank goodness he doesn't have to chew me out for not taking a
bath or something like that. That would have been just too embarrassing. What,
what the point that I am making is that we took those tasks very seriously. And
as president of the Laredo Club for instance at the University
of Texas, it must have been around 1949, 1950, I made a point to find out
which students were, were attending the University of Texas. And
when we had our meetings we assigned
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20
persons that knew them or knew
the families. And, and in Laredo everybody knew everybody and,
and, and provided or assigned a mentor or mentors to these students and assist
them in the transition from a small town with no college to the huge
University of Texas at Austin.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Could non-Laredo ones join the Laredo
Club? And did they?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Uh, the, there weren't any that I could remember. I don't
think the bylaws precluded anybody not from Laredo from joining,
but I don't remember there being any. We had, at that time, 1946 when I went to
University of Texas, we had a lot of veterans coming out of services
and under the G. I. Bill attending the University of Texas and other colleges
throughout the country really. And really, you had, at that time, kids like me
who were fifteen years old, others that were sixteen, seventeen years old, then
you had people like Ed Idar, that, that was a veteran. And,
and some even much older than that that were students over there. We also had
another organization at the University of Texas that was all
Hispanic and that was the Alba Club.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What did that stand for?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
For the Spanish
word Alba ,(dawn) and,
and we chose that name because it was the dawning of a new period. It was
incorporated in 1946 as an official University of Texas
organization, student
Page:
21
organization and it was made up of Hispanics
mostly from South Texas. And most, most of the students from
South Texas that were Hispanic or Mexican American enrolled in
the Alba Club and performed very much the same type of, of tasks
that the Laredo Club performed. Although perhaps we were more vocal
on, on the social issues. We even worked very extensively with a physician from
Corpus Christi, Dr. Hector Garcia, in, in the
organization of communities as students from the University of Texas
and this is why I say sometimes I spent more time on other activities than I
did on course-work. We visited small towns throughout South
Texas and organized the Mexican American population into what were
subsequently known as G. I. American, American G. I. Forum chapters
as in, in, in this large civil rights organization that Dr. Hector
Garcia
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
How did you find out about him? How did he recruit you to do this?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
One of the
students that, that, that stayed in the house where I was living was
Xico Garcia.
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Xico. X-I-C-O. Who was, who was Dr. Hector Garcia's
brother. Xico is now a physician in Corpus Christi and
Xico Garcia, I believe at that time, was a, was a veteran. But
anyway, Xico started doing a lot of work with his brother, with Hector
Garcia. We all got to meet Hector Garcia when we were very, very
young. We were heavily
Page:
22
influenced by him and another person that I
will tell you about. And then Hector Garcia would say well,
there has been a lot of reports of discrimination in Cuero,
Texas, you know, and there are a lot of Hispanics over there, but they
are not organized or anything. Why don't you go this weekend to Cuero,
Texas? And we would go over there. And, and one technique was Alba
Club members formed a, a baseball team and we would go to Cuero,
Texas and challenge a, a group from Cuero, almost every South Texas had
a, a whole bunch of amateur teams, baseball teams, and we'd play baseball. We
had some very good players on, in, in our club and gave them a fairly good
game.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Softball or hard ball? |
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Sometimes softball, but mostly hard ball. And, and after
the game, we scheduled a meeting. and we were all at the ball park and the
wives and children and mothers and fathers and, so forth. And all of them, all
of the members of the teams were, were Mexican American, and then, we would
start talking and, and do the dog and pony show for Hector
Garcia about the need for organization, the discriminatory treatment
they were receiving. In some of those towns they even had the Mexican school
where all of the children attended that were Mexican Americans were completely
segre, segregated and, and were
Page:
23
attending segregated schools. And
most of them that I saw were vastly inferior to the schools that white Anglos
attended. And, and then, we would have the little rally and, so forth. On a
couple of occasions the police got wind of the, the authorities got wind of
such organization was taking place. And they set the police on us. And they
broke up those little rallies and dog and pony shows we were putting on about
the rights of men and, and freedom of, of association. And, and were chased out
of the parks, which were mostly public parks or the sandlots where we were,
where we were playing. So, so . . .
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
What were some of these communities you went to other
than Cuero?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
They were, they were a whole bunch of them. I would
rather not get into the individual names. Some of them are, are, have changed
considerably, but, of course I would say Bastrop,
Cuero, New Braunfels, San Marcos,
and then others, Luling, we used to call it
el hule (the rubber) and, and
Seguin. I, I really, you know, you are talking about something
almost, that has been more than fifty years ago. I don't remember all of the
communities we went to. And I don't even remember which ones I went to and
which ones other members went to, but we couldn't go every weekend. That was
almost a full time job.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
How did Hector Garcia provide you with the
contacts? I, I mean, in that period . . .
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Yes.
Page:
24
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
. . .of
time there were no faxes and you probably didn't have phones, so and
correspondence takes too long, I mean.
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Well, Xico
was in continuous communication with his brother and Xico would go home on the
weekend. In fact, sometimes some of us would go home with, with Xico over the
weekend. And I never did, but some of my friends stayed over at Dr. Hector
Garcia's house.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
So, some of you had cars? |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Xico had a car. And the only
other one that had a car was Jesse Trevino from, he was from
Alice, not Alice, McAllen, very successful
insurance agent and has an agency in, in McAllen. But he hadn't
the car very long. He loaned it to me one Saturday night and girl and I were
parked at Mt. Venel. And somehow the car went out of gear and we went over the
cliff embankment there. Demolished. Demolished the car. But yeah, some of the
veterans, many of the veterans had cars. I remember, I think, Jesse had a,
before that, had a bicycle and most of us just walked and rode the bus and, so
forth.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
You
alluded to the relationship with Dr. Garcia. Were you involved
in that infamous Three Rivers case with Felix Longoria?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
No. No. At least I
wasn't. I don't know if any of the other members of the, of the . . .. I was
very familiar with the case, but I don't know if any of the other members of
the Alba Club at the University of Texas participated in
that, but I, I think Dr. Garcia probably handled that on his
own. Dr. Garcia ran a tight ship. And the American G. I. Forum
Page:
25
and a lot of the activity he undertook himself and he performed
himself. In fact, throughout existence of the American G. I. Forum
until Dr. Garcia's illness and passing away, a lot of the activity was very,
very tightly controlled by Dr. Hector Garcia. He was the
founder and he was the leader. If he got quite a bit on his own.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Any clue as to why it was
named American G. I. Forum? You, you said that you organized, but,
but under . . .
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Yeah, because the . . . |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
No name apparently, and then, that led to
some organization.
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Well, Hector organized us as, as an organization of
Mexican American veterans of World War II. And, and this is the reason for, for
the G. I. Forum. Because there were G. Is. that had, that were
getting out of the Army in 1945, 1946. They had several things in
common. Most of them had, had very poor educations. A lot of them were going
back to college. Educational opportunity for Mexican Americans, as you well
know, in 1946 were not, not the best. If I remember correctly, Crystal
City, not a single Mexican American had ever attended high school up to
1946. Well, anyway, they were veterans and therefore the G. I. name. I think he
used American to emphasize the fact that we were Americans and, and, or they
were because I wasn't a veteran then. I am a veteran now. But, but the funny
thing is that I was not eligible though I did a lot of organizational work for
the G. I. Forum. I was not eligible for membership. And I was never a
Page:
26
member because I was not a veteran of, of, of any sort, any branch of
the, of the military.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Do you know if Dr. Garcia followed the same mode
of recruiting young men out of A & M or A & I to
work with some of these other communities like
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
I have no idea. At, at, among
my close friends, Bob Sanchez from Laredo, we
grew up next door to each other in Laredo; we both attended the University
of Texas in those years. Bob Sanchez was one of, of
Xico's very good friends and, and, and he was very close to Dr. Hector
Garcia. And here we are talking about fifty some odd years later;
Bob Sanchez is still very active as, as a member of the board
of the American G. I. Forum. But I really don't know. As you said,
there were, the cost of telephones was prohibitive and there was no, not much
communication in any relationship with Texas A & M, for
instance. It was rather hostile around Thanksgiving Day when we had the
football game. So, really there, I don't know to what extent Hector
Garcia took this at any other colleges.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
OK. You mentioned and promised that you
were going to talk about the second influential person in your life.
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Well, that was . . .
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Who was
that?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
The great
George Sanchez at the University of Texas in, in
Austin. And I get chills just thinking about the man. A very
modest man,
Page:
27
small, thin, sickly, but he had a very small body with
a huge head and in that huge head he had a, a magnificent brain. He had taught
in New Mexico and at the, at the university and he was recruited
and acquired in the Philosophy Division of their Department in the College of
Education at the University of Texas. There were very few Hispanic
faculty members at the University of Texas at Austin in 1946. There
were a few. But certainly he was the most prominent one and he liked students.
He, he, he spent a lot of time with us. He was the one that sponsored us, a
faculty member, the organization of the Alba Club. And, and, and he
used to invite us over to his house on, on Sundays after church and had ice tea
or coffee or whatever. And we used to sit on the lawn or sit on the porch and
talk about social issues, educational issues, whatever. I took a course under
him in 1949 on multi-cultural education. The only course I ever took that
related to the type of work that I am doing now at, at during my undergraduate
years. And then, Dr. George Sanchez served on my doctoral
committee at the University of Texas. And by the time that I
graduated and I graduated in 19, got my doctorate in '66, he was already very,
very ill and, in fact, didn't even attend my dissertation defense. But for many
years, George Sanchez was the academic voice of the Mexican
American in Texas and he was very respected. He was very astute.
He described bi-lingual education programs. I have seen early writings of him
where he talks about the concept of bi-lingualism and bi-lingual
Page:
28
education many, many years before it became a, a, a feasible response or, or an
alternative in, in any other part of the country. In fact, he wrote about
bi-lingual education or conceptualized it when he was still with the
University of New Mexico. He was a very, very brilliant person. When
I was working for the Southwest Lab, I had some misunderstandings
with him. At that time I was director of Migrant Education for the
Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. We were implementing a
pilot program in what was known as the extended school amendment, school day
for migrants. And one of the conditions for doing so was to put all the
migrants in one building in, in the school district. McAllen was
an example. They used the old high school, the old administrative offices
central school and made it a migrant center. All of the children who were
migrant, they didn't start classes until, until October, middle of October,
which was good because many of the migrants, most of the migrants were not back
until then. They closed in, in April, which is good because most of the migrant
children were leaving. And, and I developed a lot of programs to offset what I
called the program discontinuity available to migrant children. And that is
that the instructional program it seems that the kid that, that is in class
today was in class the day before and is going to be in class the following
day. It has sequence. It has continuity. And the migrant children, moving as
often as they do, are, are, cannot participate in this continuity and, and I
was advocating. I am talking
Page:
29
about the middle Sixties for more,
much more individualized instructional programs which where the instruction
was, was geared to the experiences of the kids rather than a predetermined
sequence which was aimed at students at large and students that geographically
were much more stable than the migrant population. George
Sanchez, I thought he would support this very strongly and he did. He,
he just had a very strong reservation about the placement of the migrant
children in a segregated setting. And he warned me. And, of course, we had
learned the lessons of Brown versus Board of Education.
And he warned me that, that the segregation of the migrant children was
detrimental enough to probably offset all of the gains that I was proposing in
the programs and services and organization in calendar for the special school.
I, I, I had a lot of respect for him and I told him so. And, and I said that I
still wanted to try it and he just shook his head and says, "Well, do so,
" he says, "but I am warning you. Beware of the effects of the
segregation of the migrant children. " In retrospect, I think he was
right. I was wrong. And that the placement of the migrant students in isolated
campuses with nothing but migrants and as George Sanchez said,
no models for lifestyles outside of the migrant model, I thought was
detrimental for them, for the children. But I, you know, I'm, I had a lot of
remorse over it. I tried something. Some of the concept worked very well. In
many ways the education of migrant children was enhanced and improved. I, I
still think that
Page:
30
George Sanchez was right in that
the segregation was legally, morally, hegemonicaly wrong. And, and I, I lost
advocacy for, for met for the migrant education and the tailoring of a
structural program to meet the lifestyles of the migrants, but the physical
segregation of the children. And I am adamantly opposed to it now like
George Sanchez was then.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
You mentioned earlier the higher education
comparison to the local schools funding issue. You said it was basically the
same thing. Why do you think the Supreme Court of Texas rejected,
unanimously, the, that there was no discrimination in the higher education of
Mexican Americans in Texas?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Yeah.
Tocayo , (Namesake) if, if anybody could
figure out why the Supreme Court of Texas does things, I think that
they would be the most successful people in, in the, in, in the world. I think
it is the same base, basic issue. If you have an elite system of education both
at the elementary and secondary levels and in the institutions of higher
education and that they still want to preserve a, a, an educational system
that, that, that offers an elitist education to some of their students. I
understand the arguments. I, I am a supporter of the University of Texas at
Austin and graduated. And I understand the arguments about having a, a flagship
university, a university that really can accomplish something in, in research.
The only problem is, of course, that lack of quality institutions in certain
parts of the state certainly before the LULAC litigation never,
there were very few
Page:
31
universities in the border area. There still
are very few universities in the border areas. Those are the universities that
exist have limited, very limited resources and, and you have some, a very rich
university at, two very rich universities, University of Texas at
Austin and the one in, Texas A & M. University of
Texas Austin being one of the wealthiest universities in the world, and
then, you have universities elsewhere that don't have those kinds of resources.
Let me give you an example of the impact of this. I have taught courses on a
part time basis on school finance and other subjects at the University of
Texas at San Antonio. I have taught the identical course at the
University of Texas at Austin. I got paid twice as much for teaching
the course at the University of Texas at Austin than I got paid for teaching
the course at the University of Texas at San Antonio. And they even gave me a
gasoline allowance to offset the distance that I had to travel to teach the
course at the University of Texas at Austin. You look at faculty salaries at
some of those universities, and they have tremendous administrators,
Julietta Garcia at the University Texas at
Brownsville, the international university at Edinburg,
they, they just don't have the type of resources that are available to the
flagship university and, and . . .
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Nor the degree program. |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Yes. The information that was
presented by, by the lawyers in, MALDEF [Mexican American Legal
Defense and Education Fund]
Page:
32
lawyers in the LULAC
[League of United Latin American Citizens] court case shortly showed
that there was a, a shortage of, of programs in, in some of the areas of the
state where your, where you have your biggest concentration of Mexican
Americans. It is still true. If a kid from Brownsville or
McAllen wants to go to medical school, the closest one would be
the one here in San Antonio. He could go here, he could go to
Galveston or maybe Texas Tech or wherever, but it, he
has to leave the valley in order to go to medical school. Same thing is true
of, of law schools. In fact, even San Antonio doesn't have a
state supported law school and, and a, a person from Central and South Texas
who wants to go to law school, public law school at public expense, would have
to travel to, to, the nearest one would be the University of Texas at
Austin to attend. In other words, the disburse, on the other hand, areas
of the state that have less minorities in it, Mexican Americans, are very, very
quick to get new programs. A relatively new university like the University
of Texas at, at Arlington that you are familiar with, got a plethora of,
of new programs almost immediately, programs that the University of Texas
at Brownsville or, or in Edinburgh still don't have. Or,
or Laredo, even though it is a much newer university.
Permian Basin, I don't know why you need a . . . University of
Texas would feel they need a university at Permian Basin only a few miles
from Texas Tech another state university. And from whom it drew most
of its clientele, but yet that is a magnificent
Page:
33
little university.
It's a, the only thing they don't have is students. But they have a beautiful
campus and they have a lot of resources. It is well funded. I, I, I think they
have more facilities and better facilities than University of Texas at, at
Brownsville where they still use old cavalry stables for, for their educational
activities. So it seems that the northern part of the state got a lot of new
programs and, and resources and that the southern part of the state did not,
which is the essence of the LULAC arguments in, in, in the higher
education court case.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Moving off from some very important roots about your life, you,
you had graduated. I want to take you back to the original question of the
career track. You graduated, became a teacher at nineteen, took a job,
apparently, somewhere. Could you, could you follow up and tell us how you went
from teacher to superintendent and the battles that you incurred?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Well, I was a, a teacher in,
in 1950 and having come from Laredo went to Laredo back to teach
and, and I taught in Laredo at Christian Junior High School,
1950-1951. I taught science and, and L. J. Christian Middle, now
they call them middle schools, but it was junior high then, and in 1951
something very interesting happened. I got drafted and I got eventually sent to
Korea.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Even though you were a teacher? |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
And you did not get a
deferment?
Page:
34
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
No, they did not give teacher deferments. And, and I got
drafted and I got, I was in the Army for a two year period.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Where did
you go?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Well,
they sent me to Camp Roberts, California where I took basic
infantry training, and then, when, when I got out of basic training I had three
options. They have these counseling sessions where they give you the options.
And I had the option, remember I had been a teacher, and I had several majors.
I could teach teaching fields, Spanish, English, Science as teaching fields and
I had taught Science in the Laredo Public Schools. Well, I got the
offer being a paratrooper, a baker, or a radio operator. I chose radio
operation. I think baker would have been easier, but I, I didn't relish the
thought of getting up at four o'clock in the morning or three o'clock in the
morning for baking the, the bread. So, I took radio operator. I did very well
in radio operator school and they kept me there at, in Camp Roberts as a, as a
radio operator instructor for almost a year after I graduated from, from the
radio operator's training program. And then, towards the end of my tenure in
the Army, I think there were just desperate for manpower or something because I
only had seven months to serve and, and they sent me to Korea. And, and I was
sent to . . . and off the West Coast of Korea. A combat zone. And most of what
I did was radio operation and also training South Koreans in radio operation.
1953, my two years of compulsory military service were terminated.
Page:
35
I had no intention of staying in the United States Army, as
hospitable as they were, and when I got out in 1953, I faced the same
educational issue I had faced in 1946. I had a teacher certificate and I had
one years, three years actually, because the Army years counted as a,
officially, as teaching experience. And I wanted to work on a Master's Degree.
Again, by this time they had a community college in Laredo. They did not have a
four year university and certainly there was not any graduate school anywhere
in South Texas that, that I could attend and get a Master's
degree. The closest was Our Lady of the Lake College here in, in
San Antonio, Texas and there was no state university in, in
San Antonio. And Our Lady of the Lake was just the
most feasible one, so when I got out of the Army in 1953, I stayed
in San Antonio in order to be able to work, teach, and work on
my Master's Degree. I, I went to work for the Edgewood School
District in 1953. I had applied at another school district and they were
very interested because there was no shortage of teachers at that time. The
baby boomers were just starting to hit the schools, but they informed me that
they had no vacancies in the predominantly or almost exclusively Mexican
schools. And, and, and I says, "Well, what about some of the non-Mexican
schools? I could teach science there. " And the superintendent informed
that they did not send Mexican teachers to those schools. I was, I was very,
very surprised and very hurt over, over this. And my wife had been teaching in
the Edgewood School
Page:
36
District when I was overseas and,
and she suggested that I go talk to the superintendent over there. And I went
to talk to Ely Arnold and Ely Arnold, we, we didn't bother
him, the ethnicity didn't bother him. And he did not have a vacancy that year
in high school but he told me that if I taught at, in the Edgewood District,
I'd have high priority for the first vacancy that turned up in Edgewood
High School. So, I taught at Coronado Elementary School in
1953 and 1954. Taught, started at third grade, and then, they reorganized and I
taught fifth grade and I, I taught the fifth grade at, at Coronado School. All
the population was Hispanic, Mexican American. In fact, you could spend weeks
out there on the streets and in grocery stores without ever hearing anything
but Spanish spoken. It was referred to as the Mexican part of town. And it was
the far west side because you also had the Mexican part of town that was closer
to town on the east side of 24th Street, Culebra, which was the dividing line
between Edgewood and, and the San Antonio School District. I taught
their fifth grade and at the end of the year I was informed that there was a
science and biology teaching vacancy at Edgewood High School. So, in
1954 I moved to Edgewood High School and I taught their science and biology. I
taught there one year. And the, the school was really growing and, and it had a
principal as the only administrative officer. And the principal, Jimmy
Forreston, that I was teaching under called me into his office one day
and said that he had been authorized to hire
Page:
37
a vice principal and
wanted to know if I would accept the position? This was in 1955. I was
twenty-four years old. So I became vice principal of Edgewood High
School. The first vice principal of Edgewood High School. Incidentally,
at that time Edgewood was at least ninety percent Hispanic, Mexican American.
When I became vice principal in 1955 I was the first Mexican American
administrator in the Edgewood School District.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
We are recording again.
You were just telling me that you became the first vice principal.
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
I became the first
vice principal of Edgewood High School in 1955. At the same time I
became the first Mexican American in an administrative position in, in 1955. At
that time the district had about twenty-four, twenty-three, twenty-four, maybe
twenty-five, about twenty-two schools, I think. And, and each one had a
principal and, and, and there was some staff at the central office and
supervisors and curriculum coordinators and counselors and, so forth. And I was
the first Hispanic to work, first Mexican American to work in an administrative
position.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Can you tell me briefly if you know, when the proliferation of
school districts occurred and why? Was, was this just Edgewood and San Antonio
Independent and that was the segregation or there were more?
Page:
38
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
No, no. Originally,
of course, there was a, a coterminous school district that was part of the city
of San Antonio and that is the San Antonio Independent
School District. Which down the line, I don't exactly remember what year,
but way back there, the, the school district became independent of, of the
city. As the city of San Antonio grew the school district did
not grow with, with the city. There was another school district that was very,
very prominent in another city and that was Alamo Heights. And Alamo
Heights incorporated as an independent school district and San Antonio
incorporated as an independent school district. The city of San Antonio started
growing, and then, the annexation of the San Antonio Independent School
District became very population and wealth conscious. So that the growth of the
San Antonio Independent School District was independent of the growth of the
city. For the most part, the school district wanted to keep all of the big
wealth, which was the downtown area of San Antonio. I am talking many years
before expressways and, and loops and, so forth. And I, I am not going to say
that the, the San Antonio School District didn't grow, but the growth was very
selective. So that predominantly Anglo neighborhoods and, and wealthy
neighborhoods were annexed to the San Antonio Independent School District, but
some of the lower wealth areas or minority areas were not accepted for
annexation. At that time there was Alamo Heights School District,
San Antonio School District, and most of the
Page:
39
rest was
the county system of schools. Many of the school districts have tried to get
out of the county system because being a, a part of the county meant that you
competed with, with the sheriff's office and other county services for the tax
dollar. And the option was available to incorporate as independent school
districts. I think Edgewood remained as such because it was an area that nobody
particularly wanted. It was almost all Hispanic and had very low wealth,
housing and, and very small housing and with very little tax value. And as
other school districts incorporated, Edgewood was just kind of left as part of
the, of the county system, and then, I think it was around 1950 Edgewood
finally had no choice but to incorporate as a school district on it's own.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Then the net
result being the segregation of Mexican Americans, no?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
That's right. That's right.
In fact, Bob Brischetto, who used to work as a research director
for IDRA, on a part time basis, is a very well known professor at
Trinity University, Our Lady of the Lake, and then, with
the Southwest Voter Registration Project has proposed the theory . .
. And we considered it for the court suit against the state of
Texas on school finance that, that Edgewood had been created . .
. And there was sufficient evidence to, to prove the case. I don't think
possibly to win it, that the creation of the Edgewood School
District was illegal because the, the, it, it was done so in order, for
segregation purposes. This is similar to the argument that Del
Rio advanced in U.
Page:
40
S. v. Texas in
the San Felipe, Del Rio intervention suit in
which Del Rio argued that San Felipe or Del Rio could not be continuous as
independent school districts because they were created as two different
entities for segregation purposes. And Judge William Wayne
Justice accepted this argument and ruled the consolidation and ruled
the enforcement into consolidation of San Felipe and Del Rio into the San
Felipe Del Rio Independent School District because it had been created
illegally for segregation purposes. The only thing is that by this time, in
response to Bob Brischetto's argument, I would think that I, as superintendent
of Edgewood or the superintendent that followed me was particularly interested
in joining the San Antonio Independent School District. Although I
must mention that during the 1950s, when I was working for Ely Arnold,
Dr. Ely Arnold, Dr. Arnold made a request to the San Antonio
School District for incorporation and he was rejected by the, by, by the San
Antonio School District. The reason that was stated and that's all, I heard
this from Arnold himself, as well as, saw it in the newspapers, was that they
both had bond debited indebtedness and that complicated the issue. The, the
irony is that all areas that are incorporated and all school districts that
merge have bonded indebtedness and has not been a major problem for
incorporation. It was with Edgewood. In other words, Edgewood was turned down.
Something funny happened on, on the way to history. And that is that a lot of
the wealth moved out of the San
Page:
41
Antonio Independent School District
and schools like Jefferson High School that were predominantly white
Anglo and Edison and others suddenly found themselves as, as minority schools.
And a lot of the wealth moved out of the San Antonio School District. And,
right now, the San Antonio School District is really a low wealth school
district in Texas. A lot of the wealth now being incorporated by
the northeast school district, some of it on the north side school district,
which is not a wealthy school district either. But San Antonio School District
lost it's wealth and, and there was an influx of minority populations into what
became the inner city of San Antonio. And, and, and this is ironic because they
didn't want Edgewood because it had too many Mexicans and yet, San Antonio
School District now has more Mexicans than there are in the Edgewood School
District. And what they proposed or Brischetto said that we could probably go
to federal court and force the merger and the San Antonio School District and
Edgewood. My basic concern is that the merger of a poor school district with
another poor school district will produce a larger poor school district. And,
therefore I did not see this as a feasible solution for the wealth disparity
problems of the Edgewood School District, and other low level school districts
in Edgewood, in, in San Antonio.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
What prompted the formation of Harlandale on the south
side?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
The same
thing. Exactly the same thing. They didn't want to stay as part of the county
system because they were not getting adequate
Page:
42
resources and when
you became an independent school district, you had taxing power, all of which
you kept. And it was better for the school district to collect and, and utilize
it's own taxes than to be part of the county and have to go to commissioner's
court to ask for money for the operation of the school.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Was that the same
scenario as the San Antonio Independent that was set up as a white school
district and then before they knew it, it became minority and Mexican American?
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Certainly
Harlandale, that was a pocket of whites locked in the Southside.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Southside, southside . .
..
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
But, but
with no wealth, see. You remember that I said the SAD was interested in, in the
acquisition of white populations. It was interested in the acquisition of
taxable wealth. Some of them incorporated before Edgewood. South San [Antonio
Independent School District], for instance, when they incorporated, it, it is
ironic, but they, the district line is, follows the railroad track. And they
incorporated and took the, the track, which is taxable property out and, and,
of course, Edgewood has nothing similar to it. In fact, analysis of the
Edgewood School District, the biggest taxpayer was the telephone company. And
there is very little, there were very few business properties that, that
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43
produced taxable wealth. I think about the only exception was the Las
Palmas . . .
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Shopping center? |
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
. . ..shopping center |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
That was recent, no? |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
. . ..which is relatively
recent. I think it opened in the, in the, in the . . .
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Late Fifties, no? |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
. . ..late, late
Fifties when I was a school principal at Stafford Elementary School.
Well, let me get back to the, my career. I worked for three years as vice
principal of Edgewood High School, then I was offered the position of school
principal in Stafford Elementary School. This was in 1958. I was twenty-seven
years old. I accepted the position and, and worked as principal of Stafford for
three years. At the same time, I started; I started working on my Doctorate
Degree. I got my Master's, my Master's in 1955, the same year that I started as
vice principal at, at Edgewood High School, which I guess, it was a
pre-requisite. I just about had to have a Master's Degree to take the position.
I did have my Master's Degree, and then, I, I started working on my Doctorate
Degree at the University of Texas in Austin. I am talking about
1959, 1960 and '61 and after three years at, at, at Stafford Elementary School,
I was offered a position at St. Mary's University in the Department
of Education. I took the position and I stayed there for, for three years as a
professor and three more years as
Page:
44
professor in, and director of
the, of the Department of Education. And I was in charge of all teacher
education at the St. Mary's University until 1967. I did get my Doctorate
Degree in '66 and, and then, I left St. Mary's University in '67, went with the
Southwest Educational Development Laboratory in
Austin for two years, and then . . .
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Is that a private entity
or a quasi-public organization?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
It's a private entity, but an entity is for the regional
laboratories established by the federal government, but it was established as a
private non-profit corporation. And with contracts and receives money from the
federal government.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Is this different that the regional service centers? |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Yes. This is a, a regional
lab whereas the regional service centers service a region of
Texas. And there are twenty regions in Texas. The Southwest Lab
serviced about originally I would say about ten states and now it is probably
limited to about five states in Texas, which includes, in, in the Southwest
which includes probably Texas, Louisiana,
Arkansas, possibly Oklahoma, and, and possible
New Mexico. But . . .
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
So, one is a federal interstate activity and the other
is an intrastate?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
One is a federal region, regional laboratory and, and
whose, whose main job is research and development and, and the other, the
regional centers are state entities whose main job is probably quasi-service,
servicing of does not have much regulatory authority and do very little
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45
in the area of research and development per se, but are like agents of
the Texas Education Agency. Although it is hard to define because
they are neither fish nor fowl. In fact, that is one of the problems with the
Texas regional centers and that their role has not been adequately defined
since their creation many, many years ago.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
OK. Well, how did you become a
superintendent?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
I was with Southwest Labs, then the chairman of the board
of Edgewood, and I was working with Edgewood at the time setting up an early
childhood education program and he asked me if I would accept the position. It
would interesting, the position of superintendent and I said, "No, I was
not. " And then, he says, "Well, what would it take for, for you to
accept the position? " And Edgewood, at that time, was a very, very
divided school district. The board members were at odds with each other.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Along class
lines, along ethnic lines? Were Mexican Americans already on the board?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Probably
philosophical lines. Philosophical lines as to which way Edgewood was going and
what kind of a district it was supposed to be and
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Were there any Mexican Americans on the
board?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Yeah. By
that time, most of the board members were Mexican American. I am talking about
1967, '69, I am sorry. And, and then, kind of as a joke I said, "Well,
what it would take for me to become
Page:
46
superintendent of Edgewood
would be for all seven, seven members of the board to ask me. " And, and
there was so much divisiveness within the district that I thought there was no
chance that that would ever happen, you know. It is like saying if it starts
snowing in San Antonio I will take the job. Well, sure enough, a
few days later I get a request signed by all seven members of the board
offering me the position of the Edgewood School District.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Did school
walkouts have anything to do with wanting a personnel change?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Yes. In fact, at the time Edgewood did not have a, a
school district. It was not only the walkout, but . . .
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Did not have a
superintendent you mean?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
. . .did not have a superintendent. I am sorry.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What
happened to Bennie Steinhauser?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
He resigned. And there were
some questions, some controversies, and, and he finally submitted his
resignation from the Edgewood School District. I have heard many
different stories as to why, but anyway he left the Edgewood School
District and went to Southwest Independent School District.
And they appointed Joe Lava as acting superintendent. He was
never, never hired as the superintendent. The school district was in big
problems because it was being run by committees. And just a thought of a school
district, at that time they had twenty thousand kids, grew to almost twenty
five thousand while I
Page:
47
was there, was being run by committees of the
board in a, a not very efficient manner. Well, reluctantly met with the
Edgewood board and was amazed at the amount of support that I received and the
amount of encouragement that was given to me. And I finally accepted the
position. And, and, and became superintendent in, in, I think it was probably
July 1, 1969.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Did you contact other Mexican American superintendents to kind of
find out what to do next?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
What other Mexican American superintendents? |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
There weren't any of
them? Surely there was in Laredo, they had one in
Brownsville.
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
There was one over in Rio Grande City,
there may have been one in the Corpus Christi area and I think
that, that was it. I, I was probably, not Crystal City . . . I
was superintendent way before Angel Noe Gonzalez. He contacted
me when he became superintendent of Crystal City. I think there were only two
Mexican American superintendents.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
None in Laredo? |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
None in
Brownsville?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Ogg was superintendent of
Laredo.
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48
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
So, who did you turn to for advice and, and mentoring
and counseling and guidance?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Myself. Myself. It was something I had to consider
myself. It was not a bad idea. I was particularly interested in research and
development. The only problem is educators are funny people and they feel that
people who have not had the experience cannot provide leadership to that group.
In other words, here at IDRA, all of our training specialists have teaching
experience. It is helpful. I am not sure that it is absolutely necessary except
that it is very hard for somebody that has not taught to be accepted as an
expert by a teacher and be able to relate to teachers and to provide leadership
to teachers. Same thing is true about super, superintendents. And I knew that
in research and development, not having superintendent's experience, that it
would be very difficult to work with superintendents as I was doing with the
lab because I would always be classified inferior to every super, to the worst
superintendent in the state of Texas. And like you said, at that
time there were eighteen hundred school districts in 1969 in Texas and, and,
and, and when I became superintendent I was probably the third Mexican American
superintendent out of eighteen hundred districts in, in the state. Some of
which were ironically almost a hundred percent Mexican American. Anyway, I took
the position with Edgewood for a three-year period. That was my understanding
from the board that I, I didn't want a five-year
Page:
49
contract. All I
wanted was three years. In fact, I don't know that they ever gave me a
three-year contract. I think I would have preferred to do it on an annual
basis, making it very clear to the board that I would be the educational leader
of the school district. And I expected support from the, from the board and if
the support was not good coming from the board I would be very happy to step
down and go back to doing something else. Keep in mind that by that time the
United States was finding out that there were Mexican Americans and, and
becoming acquainted with the Chicanos of this world. And here you had a Chicano
who had many years of teaching experience and had a Doctorate Degree and had
served as superintendent of schools, so I, I felt that I was very marketable.
Anyway, the board, I stayed for four years in, in Edgewood and the board gave
me unlimited support. During the four years that I was with the Edgewood
School District, I don't remember, we had discussions, sometimes even
arguments and so forth. I listened to them, they listened to me, but in the
final analysis I, I can't remember a single recommendation that I made to the
board that was not enacted into a resolution unanimously.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What battles did you have
with TEA or with other school districts in even setting up just football games?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Well, I had a
big problem with the, at that time University of Inter-Scholastic
League. And they had what we used to refer to as the Tortilla Curtain.
And, and they would assign districts like Edgewood
Page:
50
to play with
only minority school districts and considering the size of the school, the
closest one would be Del Rio or Eagle Pass and,
so forth. And whereas some of the predominantly Anglo schools played among each
other here in San Antonio, Edgewood would have to go to
Del Rio or Del Rio would have to come to Edgewood for a football
game. I, I had all kinds of problems with the Edgewood School, with the
Texas Educational Agency. In fact, I was harassed. I got very early,
met with the school district's lawyer, man by the name of Greg
Luna who subsequently served as a state representative and a state
senator and he informed me about the court case against the school district
which was the Rodriguez court case. And together we got
it turned around and, and Edgewood was dropped as a defendant and the main
defendant became the state of Texas and that was the
Rodriguez school finance case that I mentioned
previously. I was an early innovator and I, I advocated for such things as
bi-lingual education, Texas Education Agency was very reluctant
allow me to implement the bi-lingual program because it was illegal in the
state of Texas. I finally got a waiver from the commissioner of education,
J. W. Edgar. I was very interested in early childhood
education and set up probably the first preschool program in, in, in a Texas
school district, not Head Start. Head Start at the early childhood that's
housed now in the Jose Cardenas Early Childhood Center. I was
harassed by that, too. In fact, funds were, were stopped to it because
Page:
51
it was called the Jose Cardenas Early Childhood Center and
because the title did not include the word elementary school, they froze funds,
state funds for the operation of, of the school. So, they had to change the
name to Jose Cardenas Elementary School, even though it was a
preschool designed as such and built as such, previously funded by my own
city's money. I started programs in multicultural education. I started programs
in dropout prevention, a youth tutoring needs, parental involvement, urban
rural, which was empowerment to the community. Actually many, many career
opportunities, there are many, many programs considering that I had worked with
Washington and, and at that time the Office of Education.
Subsequently, the Office of Education very, very closely and was perhaps the
most used minority consultant and participated in the development of those
federal programs. I was very fortunate in getting a lot of programs funded for
the school district in, in, in, of Edgewood. And state education agency was not
very supportive and sometimes it was hostile, sometimes extensive about the
harassment. I, I had a dropout prevention program in which we took the worst
performing kids in the school and put them in the program and none of them
dropped out of school under this program. But I provided stipends for them to
teach other kids in, in their schools, which is now Coca Cola Value Youth
Program that is all over the country and we also had in
Brazil that we are going to start as a result. A very successful
program. Texas
Page:
52
Education Agency stipulated that I was
using entitlement funds for paying, for the stipends for the students and that
this was not allowed under Title 1. Well, there was no prohibition under Title
1, but they would not allow it and they virtually killed most of the program. I
still had some funds coming from New York City and continued the
program, but the biggest part of the program was wiped out because of the
ruling by the Texas Education Agency. They were very much opposed to, well at
one point; they were very supportive when I started a bi-lingual education that
was a turnaround. And suddenly the Texas Education Agency became the biggest
impediment to bi-lingual education in the state of Texas. And, and they were
very unhappy about my activities and advocacy for bi-lingual education. Texas
Education Agency was astounded and horrified at, at, at my proposal that all
kids in all school districts have access to equal funding in the state system.
And there were two entities that fought me for twenty-eight years. They are
still fighting me on the question of school finance equity. One is the Texas
Education Agency which is fuddy duddy. They are being responsible for children
and children's education in Texas that they take such a strong stand and
opposition to children receiving equitable funding. The other agency, of
course, is the Attorney General's office in the state of Texas who claimed that
they oppose equity because it is against the law in Texas and they are sworn to
uphold the law. I have mentioned to all the attorney
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53
generals,
including Dan Morales, that there is such a thing as an equal
protection law in Texas and that perhaps they should enforce
that law rather than the inequitable funding of schools. The fact that I was
right and that they were wrong is proved by the Supreme Court
decision in Edgewood versus Kirby in which they ruled
the whole system of school finance in the state of Texas unconstitutional and
this is in the Texas Supreme, in the Texas Supreme Court. There, I,
I went to court on behalf of, of the children of the San Felipe
Independent School District, and then, had an education plan and imposed
upon the San Felipe Del Rio Consolidated District by Judge
Justice that was very much based on my recommendations to the court.
This nobody took kindly to. And, and then, I did a lot on behalf of immigrant
children in Doe versus Plylar, Texas Education Agency.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Didn't,
didn't a lot of this work also to get institutionalized in the
Lau decision?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Well, later in the, yeah, in the Lau decision, but Lau was, was
really a very weak decision that just said that, that, if the kids did not
speak English and the, and the teachers did not speak Chinese that there was a
problem. Something in San Francisco was, was . . ..
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
But they adopted a series
of guidelines. I thought they were partly fashioned by your early work.
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Well, I was a member
of the Low team at the U. S. Office of Education that developed the
Lau guidelines. I think the two of us
Page:
54
that
did the most in developing of the guidelines were myself and my good friend
from California, De Avila.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Not the lawyer? |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
De Avila, oh god.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Well, it
will come to you.
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Ed, Ed De Avila, the linguist. The one
that developed the Lass Test and, so forth. Anyway, we drew up most of that and
in fact the model that was used was my model on language relationships and was
used for Low compliance and so forth. Well, Texas Education Agency was appalled
and, and everything. And let me say that, that Low was, was based on language.
The Doe versus Plylar was based on citizenship. And
that was the undocumented children's case where I felt that children ought to
be in school. And let the adults figure out who stays and who goes and who is
legal and who is not legal. But in the meantime that children should stay in
school. And no less a person that the head of the commissioner of the
Immigration Naturalization Service supported me in, in
Doe versus Plylar and the subsequent multiple district
litigation saying that most of the kids were going to become citizens anyway
and that Texas was proposing that they be kept out of school
until they became citizens at the age of eighteen. And as I said then, and I
say now, "What do you do with an individual
Page:
55
at the age of
eighteen that becomes a citizen that has never attended school? You are
inheriting a tremendous liability. " But the state of Texas didn't see it
as such and said that, that they imposed a, a financial burden to the state of
Texas. Which was funny because in the, in the Rodriguez case, they had said
that there was no financial burden and even though the poorest of the school
districts had an abundance of money to put on the adequate instructional
program. There were other things that I pointed out to the court in
Doe versus Plylar. Mainly that they said that the
immigrant kids would lower the quality of education and I not felt that they
were wrong because most of the immigrant children outperformed native born
minority children in this country. If anything, they would, they would lift the
quality of education in, in Texas. Anyway, the question was how did TEA react
to all of this? Well, I would, I would say that for many, many years I was the
most unpopular person in, in, in the state of Texas. One of the reasons for
leaving Edgewood and, and forming this organization to continue the advocacy
for bi-lingual education, for school finance equity, for multicultural
education, for immigrant children, for migrant children was that I was very
vulnerable as a superintendent of a school district controlled and regulated by
the Texas Education Agency. Mexicans have a saying, you know, once I get out
from the Edgewood School District and start my own organization, as Mexican
Americans
Page:
56
say, "They peel it to me. " And, and I guess I
have been in that privileged position for the last twenty-five years.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
You seem to
be saying that you found solutions to the incredibly high dropout rate or
pushout rate of the Mexican American children, and yet, the state doesn't
support those solutions. What, what are some of the solutions to stopping or
diminishing the dropout rate?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Well, there are a lot of, there are a lot of problems
that, that create the dropouts. I think that the solutions are as bad as the
problems. But I think that you can get down to basics and not say that poor
performances in school is probably the biggest cause of dropouts. However
schools did not agree with this and the schools say that it is the lack of, of,
of an appreciation of education, which I think is, is, is a bunch of baloney.
Mexican Americans appreciate education. It may be that, you know, like a 747
jet. I don't have one not because I don't appreciate it, but because I can't
afford to buy one, see. And Mexican Americans don't stay in school, not because
they don't appreciate it, but because they, they can't buy it; they can't, they
can't succeed in school. Their performance is real bad. The, the and
incidentally the dropout rate in the state of Texas is, is still a massive
problem and growing. And, and I think almost forty percent of the children in
Texas are dropping out of schools. The Texas Education Agency, which was very
concerned, has finally sided with the superintendents that don't admit to the
existence of the problem. And they do depress the
Page:
57
number of
students that reported as dropped out by such things as saying that a lot of
the students transferred out although nobody knows where they went. And, and
why if so many students transfer out, the number of students in Texas keeps
increasing. Obviously there must be somebody transferring in, yet the number of
kids lost in the longitudinal road continues to increase. The school districts
say that a, a girl, for instance, that is pregnant and leaves school is not a
dropout because once she has her child she will probably come back to school. I
don't see where they get these figures. I, I think the number of girls that
have, teenage girls, school age girls that have children return to school in
very, very small numbers and this has been adequately documented, so why assume
that, that they are going to return and, and not count them as dropouts. Those
statistics just don't support their, their argument. I think the worst thing
now is they don't drop, kids don't drop out of school anymore if you can get
the kid to say that he is going to enroll in a GED program. Then, he quits
going to school, but he is not a dropout because he, he, he is participating or
he is going into a GED program. The funny thing is that whether they go to the
GED program or whether even enroll in one, is material. The kid said he was
leaving the school to go to GED, therefore it is not considered a school
dropout. So, according to the school district, they are only losing two percent
of the kids a year, maybe eight percent over the four years of high school. We
are
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58
finding four, forty percent of the students in Texas, over
fifty percent of all Hispanics in Texas, children disappearing from the schools
and, and I think that the bubble is getting bigger and bigger. It, it has got
a, it has got to burst sooner or later because of the implications. Now we find
politicians coming up with these dysfunctional responses. John
Sharp says that he; he endorses the concept of school vouchers. I
think school vouchers would help, would be disastrous to the minority
population that cannot afford additional tuition or the transportation costs or
the time to be able to take kids to schools of their choice. Besides what makes
them think that the other rich school districts or the better school districts
are going to accept the low performance students from the minority schools? And
then, the other candidate for governor comes up with, with a recommendation
that all kids in the third grade, finishing the third grade be tested and pass
a reading test before going to the fourth grade. And then, that all kids from
finishing junior high at the eighth grade have to pass, pass all tests of the
TASS before they go to high school. My gosh, with one chance to take the test,
I think that the, the number of dropouts in Texas which is already close to
forty percent will probably double to eighty percent with such fine
recommendations proposed by our governor candidates from both political
parties, major parties in the state of Texas. The situation is bad and I think
it, it is going to get worse. Why Texas Education Agency chooses to
bury it's head in the
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59
sand and say that there are no dropouts in
the state of Texas or less than ten percent, I, I don't know other than to
accommodate the superintendents that don't want the accountability for the
large number of kids that have disappeared and are disappearing in our, in, in
our, disappearing in increasing numbers in, of the public schools in the state
of Texas. I think the situation was, is, is atrocious. I think
educational leaders and the political leaders take the same position that
Dolph Briscoe took when he was addressing the joint session of
the Texas Association of School Administrators and the Texas
Association of School Board Members. And made the statement that Texas
had the finest system of schools of any of the fifty states. I was shocked that
the participants stood up and gave him a five-minute standing ovation. I
couldn't believe it. Briscoe must be real poorly informed or he has never been
outside the state of Texas to assume that Texas, which has ranked from thirty
four to fortieth in per pupil expenditures has the best educational system of
the fifty states.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Actually the applause was for hearing what they wanted to hear.
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
I think the
applause was for hearing what they wanted to hear, that they had no problems,
therefore everybody is happy. Although you do notice that administrators play
musical chairs and the tenure for a school administrator or school
superintendent gets shorter and shorter with most of your superintendents
having served less than two years in their current position, subsequent
districts are now having three and
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60
four superintendents a year.
Some of them are paying two and three superintendents at the same time,
replacing them. The situation is getting worse. Every time I talk to a new
superintendent he always says don't hold me accountable. That was before I came
here. Two years later he leaves and the situation is as bad or worse than it
was before. Of course, my making these kinds of statements doesn't make me the
most popular educator in the state of Texas, but then, I never conceived that
my career goal was entering the popularity or winning a popularity contest.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
How did the
walkouts led by Chicano students in the late Sixties into the Seventies help or
hinder the education of Mexican Americans?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
I, I think that it was
helpful. They called attention to the problems of the students and in
themselves, I would think the walkouts did accomplish a lot. Other than perhaps
the recognition of student rights that could have been achieved in, in the
courts by the Gossen and other court cases that said
the students did have, they were human beings and did have rights. But you have
the offshoot. For instance, the whole Rodriguez court case was offshoot of the
student walkouts at Edgewood High School of the 1960s before I
became superintendent over there. Incidentally, sometimes the school
authorities are unbelievably naive in facing these student walkouts. When I was
superintendent of school, a, a, one of the few Mexican American
superintendents, I was informed there was going to be a
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61
walkout at
Memorial High School, one of the high schools in Edgewood that I was
responsible for. And I go over there and I meet with the principal and I says .
. . And he tells me how they are all prepared and that they are going to lock
the doors. And then, they had faculty stationed all over the place to identify
the leaders and how they are going to suspend the leaders and it is going to be
automatic. And I thought he was very efficient. And the police had been
contacted and, and security guards had been hired to handle the students and,
so forth. And then, I asked what he thought was a grand, stupid question.
"Why are they walking out? " And they says, "Well, they say the
food in the cafeteria is terrible. " And I says, "Well, how is the
food in the cafeteria? " He says, "Well, I wouldn't eat there. It is
horrible. " Well, jeepers. Instead of all this reaction, he did everything
but bring in SWAT teams and, and trained dogs, you know, to deal with the
student walkout. And, and he didn't pay any bit of attention to the fact that
they are serving inedible food in the cafeteria. And, sure enough, I go down to
the cafeteria and, and, and conditions were terrible. And I called in the
cafeteria manager and he says, "Well, under the budget we are operating on
. . ..." and, so forth. And I says, "Well, " I said, "let's
change the budget. " And some of the things the students wanted to have
some chili sauce in there to dress up the food. I am a great eater of chili and
I love chili sauce. And I think the students were right. And many times I've
eaten in many places where I wish I had a little
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62
piquin (wild chili pepper) or
jalapeno or something to
go along with the food. And, and I asked him how much would it cost to, to, to
provide a bucket of jalapenos
there during the lunch hour? Less than a tenth of a penny per
student. It would be nothing whatsoever. It is ridiculously low priced. I just
don't know why they would have to have a confrontation with the students when
the demands of the students are fairly reasonable. And I think that the demands
of the students in Edgewood, if there was one mistake with the community . . .
And I use as an example, Harlandale, that there threatening walkouts
and, and, and having a confrontation in Harlandale over the quality of the
teachers and the pay of the teachers and COPS [Communities
Organized for Public Service] was very active in that. And I pointed out
to the COPS . . .. And I pointed out to the community of Harlandale that they
were picking up the wrong person or Harlandale couldn't get a teacher a pay
raise if they wanted to because the state system of school finance did not
provide sufficient funds for Harlandale to give teachers a pay raise. And COPS
are sharp people. And, sure enough Ernie Cortes turned his
focus and kind of let loose of Harlandale and, and, and put the bite on, on the
state of Texas and the legislature in order to get equitable funding for, for
Harlandale. They didn't succeed but, but they certainly raised it to a level
of, of a public issue and gave it a lot of publicity which they attempted to
address the issue, they just got a very poor solution in their dealings with
Governor White.
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|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What's the role of Chicano Studies in
public education?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Well, I don't know. I really don't know. I think that it
is desirable for, for populations to know their own history. Certainly white
Anglo students that come from European, northern European stock hear all about
the pilgrims and the Mayflower and, and what their ancestors contributed to,
to, to the formation of this country. I think it is equally desirable for
Hispanics, Mexican Americans, Blacks, Native-Americans to also learn about the
contributions of their ethnic groups to the formation of this country and the
customs of this country. I have a lot of people that say that, that some very
prominent people have told me that, that Mexican Americans should accept the
American culture. And, of course, my response has always been, "Well I
will consider it if you will tell me what the American culture is. " And,
and then, they start giving examples. Well, a very well established institution
from, like Taco Bell, you know, I don't think they started with
turkeys that the pilgrims killed, you know, in, in the food that they serve.
And, of course, here in the Southwest we have even social, a lot of Spanish. In
fact, the Spanish-Arabian dry land farming heritage which permeates the whole
Southwest. There were a lot of contributions. I think that you understand
yourself. The, I also think that the, that individual to be free must have
choice. And I think that in order to have choice there have to be feasible
alternatives to choose from. So, I think that one of the principals of
education and of
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64
this country is to make available and keep
available options to choose from. And I had had an argument with
Richard Rodriguez in California who says that
to survive Hispanics must assimilate and, and get rid of their ethnic
characteristics. And I argued with Richard Rodriguez that that
is a, that . . . "I, I still speak Spanish fluently, I still act as a lot
of the Hispanic Mexican cultural values, orientations, traditions. And I have
had a lot of success, sir. " Well, the schools here mildly support it and
say this is so. But that the kid must make a choice for himself. Well, this is
fine. I will go along with that. But in order for the kid to make a choice,
whether he speaks English or doesn't speak Spanish and, and I think that
everybody should be required to speak English. On the other hand, should
everybody that is Hispanic be required to speak Spanish? No, I think everybody
ought to make a choice. But if in the education process he loses his Spanish
language facility, by the time he is old enough to make a choice, let's say at
the age of eighteen or twenty one, whatever you want to call it, he no longer
has a choice if he has lost it. The same thing is, is true of cultural values.
A person may select elements of a culture, such as the family relationships,
which I think are the strongest part of Mexican culture. But he really doesn't
have a choice if such an orientation has been eliminated by assimilation by the
time that he is old enough to make that choice. So, I see schools then in the
area of language and the area of culture of maintaining viable options so
that
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65
the kid or the grownup individual may eventually make their
own choice.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
What was the National Education Task Force of La Raza
all about and what role did you play in that?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Ya me tengo que ir . . ..(I have to go . .
..) Oh, boy. OK. Incidentally I have all the files of the National
Education Task Force of La Raza and all the files from every . . ..
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Well, thank
you for the time . . ..
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Ya se me esta
acabando la voz, tocayo . (My voice is going out on me,
namesake.) Second Interview - Jose Angel Cardenas
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
We are recording. Today
is January 15, 1998. We are doing a continuation of the interview with
Jose Angel Cardenas. And we had basically covered all of the
topics I was interested in except there are some loose ends here. What role did
you play in the formation or the creation or the involvement of the
National Education Task Force de La Raza? What was that story?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
This was an
organization that was formed rather impromptu as a result of a commitment made
by Chuck Smith in, in the Department of Education
where he provided some funds for training and, and development advocacy, and,
and other activities for a national group in, in, in the United
States. There was no such national group so we formed one which was
called the National Education Task Force de La
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66
Raza and
we received a very substantial grant from the Department of
Education. It was divided into regions and the various regions conducted
advocacy activities and training activities under the auspices of the federal
grant.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Whose
idea was it?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
I
really don't know. I think Chuck Leyva and, and Steven
Arvizu, myself, Simon Gonzalez all got together and,
in El Paso, all got together and, and obtained the grant from,
from Chuck Smith. I think, just talking to him, he, he made
the commitment to provide these funds.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
How long did this last and what do you
think the impact was?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
I think it lasted many years and I think it had a very,
very strong impact. There was a lot of activity in providing training in the
empowerment of communities, empowerment of professional groups. It stems from
the National Task Force de La Raza where you used to set up the
National Association for Bi-lingual Education which is a very large
and influential group in the United States today. We provided
the funds also for the establishment of the Texas Association for
Bi-lingual Education. We, we set up an, an Association of Mexican
American School Board Members when, at a time when, when Mexican Americans
first started serving on school boards. The number was very small and we
provided not only an association, but we provided extensive training for both
local school district board
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67
members and state board members in
order to familiarize them with the concepts of the policies, the jargon that is
used in many cases. Many of them felt they didn't understand the references to
Title 1 and Title 7 and, and, so forth. And we gave them the short courses,
indoctrination courses, which I think expanded their capability to deal with
these policy issues of their new respected positions. This led to the formation
of the Mexican American School Board Members Association, also to
the Black School Board Members Association, a Coalition of Black
Educators, and the Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher
Education, TACHE, and other organizations that were spin-offs
from training activities provided by the National Education Task Force de
La Raza.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Did it have a staff? Was there an executive director? |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
I would say an, an
executive director of, usually the chairman of the, of the group acted as
executive director. Finally we did hire Henry Casso as a full
time executive director for the organization. Subsequently, he was replaced by
Tomas Villarreal in, in New Mexico.
Headquarters for the organization was usually the place where the chairman
resided so that when Simon Gonzalez was the chairperson it was
in UCLA. The Texas center never had any, any
extensive staff. I had one assistant that worked with me, chairman and didn't
receive no remuneration. At the time that I was working for the Edgewood
School District, the funds were given to the Edgewood School District
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68
and administered by the Edgewood School District. When I resigned from
the Edgewood School District and formed Texans for Educational
Excellence, and subsequently IDRA, the funds were, were
transferred and, and the sub contract on the National Education Task
Force was given to these organizations which were under, very much under
my control.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Did the chairmanship rotate? Was this a rotating leadership or how
did, what was the process?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Informally, informally. The chairmanship did rotate. And
I, I think another influential person who was from New Mexico
and with the Department of Education at the University of New
Mexico at Albuquerque . . .
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Dr. Ulibarri? |
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
No, no . . .. |
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
No. It was John Aragon. Well, John . . .
And haven't got the name yet. I am trying to remember the name.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
I am trying to help. |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Yeah. Anyway, when
he became chairperson the, the center of activity went to
Albuquerque, and it was in Albuquerque where Henry
Casso retired as executive director and therefore the central office
was located in Albuquerque.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Were there any women involved at that level?
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69
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Yes, there were some women involved. Few, but there were
some women involved.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Do you recall any names? |
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
I remember Bambi Cardenas who was
working with us. There was some people from El Paso, but, but,
but the number was small and the activity was rather limited.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What was the decision
making process like when you decided to go here as opposed to there. To do that
training at this place as opposed to helping them write up a proposal so they
can get their own training money?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Well, there was very little activity at the national
level. Mostly, mostly it was policy setting and review. Most of the activity
was at the local level and, and, and there I guess the, the local chairperson
used his discretion and subject to the wide guidelines provided by the national
task force operated the various programs, as need dictated.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Can you list, if you can
remember, some of the places you all went to do actually training or work or
support or analysis or research, investigation, or evaluation?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
I guess I, I could from, from
memory. In fact, I have a detailed documentation of all the activities of the
National Education Task Force which is, will be available from the
University of Texas and Benson Hispanic Latin-American collection.
But we, we worked with school districts in San Antonio, worked
with the school districts in, in
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70
the Valley, we
worked with school, worked extensively with Crystal City School
District, and we had meetings in, in Austin, we had
meetings throughout the state of Texas. We did a lot of, what I refer to now as
dog and pony shows where we would talk about the inequities in education. And,
and usually have cooperation from the, the city of Dallas in
the, well, not the city itself, but like civil rights organizations in
Dallas, in Houston, and in El
Paso, McAllen, Lubbock. And they would
co-sponsor the activity, so then, we would go in there and talk about the, the
inadequacies. I guess the local population gave us a lot of information on what
these semantic issues were, and then, we would sit down and brainstorm
decisions and, on, on what the school district should do for the improvement of
educational opportunities for minority children. Such things as bi-lingual
education programs, multi-cultural education, parental involvement, parental
empowerment. These things, school finance equity were common items in the
agenda of all of these activities that were, were, that were conducted
throughout the state.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Why do you think the, the, the elected school board members,
particularly Mexican Americans among others, have such a low level of efficacy
in school issues as well as some superintendents who have no concept of
national issues, national organizations, or participate in those kind of
things?
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71
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Let me start by not restricting this to Mexican
Americans. I think other ethnic groups have suffered from the same lack of
efficacy and, and I think that one of the reasons is that very few people have
even attempted to come up with some types of solutions, the clear cut solutions
that really address the nature of the problem. And I think that there is a
tendency for a new Mexican American administrator . . .. Let's say a
superintendent of schools, to continue the white Anglo, English speaking middle
class oriented policies of the school district in, in just as a dysfunctional
manner as existed before he, he was placed in that position. In other words,
the influx of Mexican Americans in key positions has not always been
accompanied by change of policy or a change in the operation or, or let alone
the pedagogical basis for, for meeting the needs of those kids. The same thing
is true of the school board members, as I have just mentioned the, the
administrators. So that it is a business as usual type of thing with a person
of a different ethnic background still operating the program which responds
mostly to the needs of the white Anglo-Saxon, English speaking middle class
geographically stable population. The same type of a program that existed
before. In contrast to this, I think what, what, what a few have done and that
is to come up with a new concept in education, new programs in education, new
approaches to education which really responds to the needs of the particular
type of, of child that, that is found in the educational program. In other
words, there has to be
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72
adaptability to the task because the number
of most of them have not thought about this adaptation.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Do you know the history
of when the corporate-type of board of directors is hiring the superintendent
that sets then management administrative guidelines for the board's set policy?
This CEO kind of business model? Do you know when that got started?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
It, it has always
been with us in, in the state of Texas. I think that it was
formalized in 1949 with the enactment of the new system of education in the
state of Texas that went through a period of educational reform and established
a foundation school program in Texas in 1949, operated in 1950. I think that,
at that time, the, the structure was formalized, the state of Texas went from
a, an elected superintendent of schools to an appointed superintendent of
schools. And from an appointed board to an elected board. And I think that much
of the management relation policy making management relationship was formalized
in 1949 under the new concept of the minimum foundation program.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Do you think that
structural situation is, is, causes the problem of, of lack of efficacy because
it is run as a business-like corporation? There is very little accountability
to the community, as well as, within themselves. And they don't deviate from
that business kind of culture.
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
No, I, I, I don't see the basic problems in education
attributed to the formal organization here in the state of Texas. For instance,
during
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73
the Perot, right after the Perot committee
made it's recommendations, they, they changed in their under House Bill 72, I
think this was around 1986, changed the, the board from an elected to an
appointed board and, and actually and then, changed back again to an elected
board. I saw no change in the methodology of the or, or the efficacy of the
state board of education when it changed from elected to appointed and back to
elected again. I think that there is some problems that are much more basic
than the fact of organization in which they work. As a professional educator, I
still advocate a professional educator in the administration of the schools. I,
I have to admit that some of the administrators have not been very effective. I
think that the problem is, as you have mentioned, lack of accountability rather
than a, a, a poor organizational arrangement of, I, I think the, the basic
problem is that there is no accountability. Has never been and, and I hope that
one day there will be. Now people are saying yes, we have accountability. The
kids must perform on the TAAS test or whatever test the state is administering.
This is poor accountability. The accountability is directed towards the kids.
The kids are the ones that pay the penalty. They cannot get a, a diploma. Under
Governor Bush's recommendation they won't even be able to be
promoted to the fourth grade or go into junior high, but it is a kid that is
being punished for, for, for poor performance. You say well, schools are found,
are found not in compliance or, or deficient. Well,
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74
that's true,
but, you know, a school is just a pile of bricks. That there is no penalty for
the chief executive officer or the superintendent of schools. There is no
penalty for the school boards. There is no penalty for the teachers or any
other employee of the schools. So, that the blame has, is, is shifted through
the school out to the students. And then, we have the unique situation in which
the person that was victimized, the student, is held responsible for being
victimized by the school district.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
What are your views about that rash of reprimands and
investigations by TEA during the mid Sixties and also to the decade
of the Seventies and into the early Eighties when Chicano superintendents
started emerging, Chicano school boards took up, they were always under
sanctions or under investigation either by TEA or prompted by the Texas
Classroom Teachers Association or Texas State Teachers
Association? What was all of that politics about other than the
continuation of discrimination?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Well, historically the Texas Education Agency
has been very tongue-tied in respect of high minorities. And I think that at
the time when, when the school systems were governed and administered by
non-Hispanic personnel there wasn't very much of, of an attempt for any kind,
any kind of accountability. Even the school districts themselves were, were,
did not have a, a, a, a systematic, let's say review. When you consider that
Crystal City School District or the Edgewood
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75
School
District in the 1960s, early 1960s, were fully accredited school
districts, and in spite of the many shortcomings . . . And I know them because
I taught there in, in Edgewood and I worked with Crystal City. In, in spite of
the fact that I was teaching science without any science equipment whatsoever,
it was just a reading type of activity. And, in spite of the fact that some
school districts had anywhere from eighty to a hundred percent dropouts prior
to graduation, nobody was really concerned. When you start talking minority
school board members and minority administrators, suddenly Texas Education
Agency, who was very lax in the hiring of minorities themselves . . ..
Remember that it wasn't until the 1960s that Severo Gomez was
hired as the first Mexican American ever to work in the Texas Education Agency.
And then, we, we find that suddenly they are very concerned about
accountability and, and student performance and, and things of that nature. And
I think it is just a question of as long as the school systems were run,
government administered by the dominant culture, there was an attitude of the
school knows best. But then, the regulation level of accountability and as
minorities started taking control of the schools, a classic example is
Crystal City, in which then everybody then gets real concerned
as to what's going on in the school district without consideration of what had
been going on before. There was this uprising and, and, and involving the
minority personnel when the government sent in the administration of the school
district.
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|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Which came first? IDRA, TACHE, or
NABE [National Association of Bilingual Educators]?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
IDRA came
first, actually. And it was not that year, at the time it was the Texans
for Educational Excellence. And it was incorporated as such, and then,
it, it actually changed it's name. And, and we filed for incorporation as
IDRA. This was in; we were incorporated originally in 1973. IDRA
provided under probably Texans for Educational Excellence when we
were still in that category. But funds for the, guaranteed the funds for the
annual conferences and the meetings that led to the form, formation of
NABE. In other words, one of the big problems in forming an
organization is bringing people together and being able to provide the funds
for guaranteeing the hotel rooms, for paying for the meeting rooms, for paying
for guest speakers, and meetings and things like that, all of the expenses that
you have for the convention for a conference. And although we had been meeting
informally, when they decided to meet formally it was necessary for somebody to
finance the activity and funds from the National Education Task Force de
La Raza and funds from IDRA were used for funding these
conferences. National Education Task Force funds were probably paid
back to the National Education Task Force. IDRA never received
payment for the expenditures that they made in guaranteeing the, the, the
conferences although really there was no profit in these conferences until many
years later when the
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organizations became self supporting and, and,
and there was a lot of interest and you had exhibit space and, and, and
registration fees and so forth that paid for the expenses of, of the
conference. And, maybe even in some cases, make a profit for their
organization. But we, we financed both the National Association for
Bi-Lingual Education, we financed the Texas Association for
Bi-Lingual Education and founded groups which I mentioned such as
TACHE and, and, and the School Board Members Association,
and, so forth.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
With all the array of problems in education of Mexican American
children, why would you and others create an organization based on a single
issue, bi-lingual education?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
It wasn't. IDRA was not an organization
created for bi-lingual education. IDRA was originally founded on a single
issue, but it wasn't bi-lingual education. It was school finance equity and the
reason is that the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie
Foundation, and some others put up some money. They had, they were
conducting some activity on school finance equity. And following the reversal
of the Rodriguez versus San Antonio School District in
1973, pledged a, a sum of money if somebody would form an organization that
would follow through on the promise of Rodriguez. And the promise of Rodriguez
was that during the trial everybody claimed that nobody was, was opposed to
complete school finance equity. They just didn't want the federal government
imposing it upon, upon the state of
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78
Texas. And that
if Rodriguez' suit was discontinued, dropped, or if, if the school district
lost the suit, then the state of Texas would come up with an equitable system
of school finance. There was a question of who is going to hold their nose to
the grindstone. And Ford Foundation made an offer of funding for a
year or two for an organization that would, that would address school finance
as, as, as an equity issue. And, and TEE [Texans for
Educational Excellence] was funded and it's sole agenda, at the time, was
school finance equity. We did bring with us; I did when I moved from Edgewood
to IDRA, the National Education Task Force funding that broadened the scope of
the organization. But it wasn't until 1975 when we were given a, a grant by the
federal government for the creation of a desegregation system center in that
ethnic minorities, language minorities that we first started addressing the
questions of, seriously, of bi-lingual education in a programmatic way.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
That's what
I was referring to, not IDRA. That, that you would create
NABE, National Association of Bi-Lingual Education.
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Well, I, I, I think
that during the 1960s the education of Mexican Americans was perceived as a, a
tremendous problem and I am sure that there were problems. I think that the
numbers of students that didn't finish school, the performance of the kids that
did stay in school indicated that there was a problem and here were a lot of
people that were interested in, in a solution to the problem in terms of
bi-lingual
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79
education. And in 1966, which I think is, is really a
landmark year, we met in Tucson, Arizona, people from throughout
the United States, mostly where the states that had a highly
percentages of Hispanics. California, Texas,
Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona,
Florida and, and proposed bi-lingual education as a methodology
and then there were people working as bi-lingual programs were being
implemented that were working in the area and had this common interest and, and
they started meeting. We did meet periodically after that and it was just a
question of time before it was formed as a, as a, as an organization.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
NABE has gone from being predominately Mexican
American to now including not only other Spanish speaking groups and
individuals, but other language groups. Is, is that a good evolution or is that
a dilution of the focus for what your original intent was?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
I think that both. I think
that there are advantages to looking at other language groups because they have
a similar problem. I think that Spanish does not have unique problems in the
United States, Spanish speaking people. I think that they share these problems
with other language minorities. In fact, in, in, in the enactment, for
instance, of the Title 7 Bi-Lingual Education Act, which incidentally
Ralph Yarborough formulated during this Tucson
conference for a fee. He met with us in Tucson in 1966 and, and produced the
bill in 1968. Originally, most of the people were Mexican Americans. In the
enactment of the bill, the political clout was not from the Mexican
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80
Americans. The enactment led, what came from the Cuban community in
Florida and those were and are mostly along the Eastern seaboard
who, at that time, became very interested in bi-lingual education, not
necessarily as a response to educational problems of Hispanic children or
Spanish speaking children, but they had a, a different interest. Their, their
interest was to maintain Spanish language competency among their children for
the eventual return to Cuba. Well, at that time in 1968, most Cubans felt that
there would be another Bay of Pigs or whatever it took and that
Castro was going to be out of there in a very short period of
time. And were concerned that their children would return to
Cuba where the official language would be Spanish and, and be a
limited Spanish speaking proficient. That is, they had lost the Spanish while
they were in the United States. Therefore, it was the
Cuban-Americans that provided the clout for bi-lingual education. In litigation
a lot of the clout that was provided was the Lau
litigation in California with, with the San Francisco
Independent School District, pardon me. And here you have a group of
Chinese kids and the litigation by Steinman, Ed Steinman,
against the San Francisco Independent School District that provided
a lot of support for Spanish bi-lingual, Spanish English bi-lingual educational
programs throughout the country. The Lau initiatives
were really triggered by the education of the Chinese children in San
Francisco rather than Hispanic populations in this country.
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|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Your reference to this Ed Steinman, who and what
was he?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Steinman was a lawyer in California that
represented Chinese children in Lau versus Nichols, a,
a court case against San Francisco Unified School District that,
that it was the first time, that, that bi-lingual education had come under,
under litigation. Actually it was not a bi-lingual education case. It was just,
a, a, a, an argument by Ed Steinman representing the Chinese children that knew
no English saying that if the Chinese kids did not speak English and the
teachers did not speak Chinese, that you had an educational problem. San
Francisco Unified School District denied this and said that there was no
problem. The court held that there was. San Francisco School District said that
if the problem was existent, then it was the, the, the cause of the problem
were the, the, the failure of the parents to teach their kids English. To which
the "Respondent" that, that, that's why the parents were sending
their kids to school because they themselves did not know any English, most of
them, and were sending the kids in, in order, to school, to acquire English.
And it was a landmark decision, Lau versus Nichols, but
as I said in, in, in, it centered around Steinman's representation, legal
representation of Chinese kids and, and not Mexican American kids. The, I
believe, Mexican American Legal Defense Educational Fund probably
was involved because relationship in the court case that it really the decision
was based on Chinese children and not Hispanic children.
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|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Are you
still an active member of NABE?
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What kind of messages
does NABE send by having the executive director being an Anglo for
all these years?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Well, I don't know. I, I really don't know what kind of a
message NABE sends. I have worked with Jim Lyons very
extensively for many, many years. And he is competent. And he is good at what
he does. And I really haven't considered his ethnicity as being any detriments,
you know. Or you could ask the same question; I founded IDRA with
money given to me by Jim Kelly and Fritz
Mosher. What kind of a message did that bring? But I think the message
is that Jim Kelly and Fritz Mosher really were very concerned with the
educational equity being given to Mexican Americans at, at that time.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Let me ask
you about your involvement with the court cases, not in the school finance, but
in San Felipe and Del Rio Independent School Districts and that
consolidation issue. Can you tell me that story?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Yeah. The two school
districts in, in Del Rio, one was the predominantly Anglo,
Del Rio Independent School District and the predominantly Hispanic,
San Felipe Del Rio School District. There is an Air Force
base over there and many of the . . . Which was located in the San Felipe
School District, which is predominantly Hispanic, and it was traditional
practice to just transfer the kids routinely and send them to the San Felipe,
to the Del Rio School District where there
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were many more Anglos
than there were in the San Felipe School District. Some people took issue with
this, San Felipe did, and, and said that the kids really belonged in the, in
the San Felipe School District. It was made a part of US vs.
Texas in the court of William Wayne Justice in the
eastern district of Texas at Tyler. And the, the
school district, and this is very, very unusual, Del Rio School
District pled in court that they were guilty of, of segregation. Now,
remember that US vs. Texas was a segregation court
case. And they say that the reason they formed these, the Del Rio Independent
School District separate from San Felipe was to segregate, to keep the
Mexicans, Mexican Americans in the San Felipe School District and not the Del
Rio School District. Judge Wayne Justice, on the basis of that
argument, ruled that if the school district was created for segregation
purposes, then the creation of the school district was illegal and ordered the
consolidation of the San Felipe and Del Rio School Districts. There were a lot
of people in, in, in, in, in Del Rio, San Felipe who were real concerned about
the Del Rio School District just swallowing San Felipe and in spite of it's
poverty San Felipe had a lot of ex-students that had done very, very well. It
had been a well mannered school district and wanted to, to make sure that the
students wouldn't be lost under prejudicial and, and, and other forms of
behavior by the Del Rio School District. And asked William Wayne Justice, Judge
Justice to set a court order that would specify certain
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benefits
that would be mandated for the kids in the, in the San Felipe School District.
Department of Justice was interested in this and was very receptive and there
was a hearing set and said before Judge Justice to present a rationale and
recommendations for how the educational opportunity of Mexican Americans in the
consolidated school district would be enhanced. And the, the, the Department of
Justice obtained my services as the principal witness, probably the only
witness, to formulate a plan and present it to Judge Justice. Judge Justice
reacted very favorably to the plan and ordered that the Del Rio School District
or the consolidated school district do certain things that would safeguard the
educational opportunity of Hispanic children in the consolidated district.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Can I ask
you what that meant? More Chicano personnel, bi-lingual education, or cultural
enrichment, the name San Felipe is first, not Del Rio. And that is the original
name of that community, San Felipe Del Rio.
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
That's right. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Is that what was in the
plan?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Well,
actually the, the naming and all that was done way before I submitted any plan.
In most of those court cases, my involvement has been on the educational issues
per se. They had already had a lot of arguments about the school colors and
what would happen to the cheerleaders from San Felipe and, and, and how many
board members
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85
would serve on the, on the resulting consolidated
school districts? My, my role was strictly on educational policies and
educational practice. And, yes, it included bi-lingual education,
multi-cultural education, included mandated parental involvement and included
early childhood education and, so forth. It was a real landmark order which has
been described a preclude to the gray prescription for what the school
districts had, has to do in order to guarantee the rights of the, of, of, of
the minority children. And included such areas as a new philosophy of
education, governance, curriculum, whole curriculum, staffing, parental
involvement, evaluation, non-instructional needs. A, a series of, of, of, of,
of topics that, that I formulated for Judge William Wayne
Justice and for the most part, I think, the whole plan was ordered
implemented. If there were some weaknesses, the San Felipe School
District or something in the Del Rio School District, the
consolidated school district did not have extensive financial resources. It is
a poor school district according to Texas standards and that's
bad enough. And there was a federal representative from HEW
[Health, Education and Welfare] that testified that federal money
was available for those purposes. I think there was a misunderstanding in that
Judge Justice felt that he had been mislead by being told by this federal
representative that money for all of these programs would be provided directly
by Washington. He did not understand that the acquisition of those funds were
on a competitive basis by proposal. Well, San Felipe
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and Del Rio
really did not break their necks in the writing of proposals nor did they spend
a lot of time and effort on money in the writing of these proposals. And they
did not qualify for a lot of the funds that could have been available in
support of these programs. And as I said, Judge, Judge Justice felt that he had
been misled to believe that the money was on an entitlement basis which, which
it wasn't. It was on a competitive basis. And some of the programs such as
early childhood education program which was modeled after the one that I
instituted in, in the Edgewood School District was never funded, never
implemented.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
What did he do about that? |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Well, he kind of eased up
some on, on, on the specifics. Judge Justice still demanded that the equal
opportunity be provided to the students and continued in, in litigation. And
then, the school district was successful in moving the litigation out of Wayne
Justice's courtroom into one here in San Antonio. And, and, and,
and the Judge here in San Antonio, the, the, the western district of
Texas was not as sympathetic as the eastern district of Texas
had been.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
How was it that this court case was filed in, in
Tyler in his case? Who were the attorneys for San
Felipe?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
The attorney for San Felipe was
Arturo, I don't remember.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
From El Paso?
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87
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Yeah. I don't
remember his last, first name right now offhand. Anyway the reason it was in
Tyler, Texas is because it became a part of, of, of
US vs. Texas when, when they filed suit against the
state of Texas. And incidentally it was the Department of Justice
that filed the suit against the state of Texas desegregation suit. It was done
in the, in the, in, in Judge Justice's court and he issued the famous
fifty-two, eight-one court order that required desegregation and equality
educational opportunity and, and included monitoring and, so forth. So that
rather than filing a new suit, the people from San Felipe, well
actually the people from Del Rio, just made it a part of
US vs. Texas which covered the whole state and was
accepted as a, an intervention motion in, in the original and, and total state
desegregation suit.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Were you involved in any of the desegregation cases in
Victoria or Dallas or Houston or
other places?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Yes, I was involved in many of them, not only throughout
Texas, but actually throughout the whole country. Maybe some
sixty something, eighty court cases throughout the whole country. Here in Texas
I was involved in the Houston De Voss desegregation court case.
In El Paso, in Dallas, in
Raymondville, in Waco indirectly, and a few
others. I was involved in many of the desegregation court cases.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
In hindsight . . . |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
In Ft.
Worth and Dallas both, uh huh.
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88
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
. . .in hindsight, many
people are, are critical today of the role MALDEF played in
accepting the Singleton Ratio, that capped resources being out there to Mexican
American children. Do you concur with that assessment today or can you tell us
why that was done at that time and accepted by plaintiffs represented by
MALDEF?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Yeah
well, I think you can justify a lot of stuff just by saying it was, it became a
lot better than what existed prior to it.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
But we have no standing now to re-enter
those cases and adjust that.
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Well, I, I think that there is no standing in segregation
court cases. I think desegregation has fallen by the wayside. It was not
popular and, and there has been a tremendous political change in this country.
There has been a tremendous court change in this country. And I don't think
that the conversation with the Supreme Court today would support any kind of
desegregation legislation or litigation. I think that the change in the
composition of the, of the court, the termination of the Warren court was very,
obviously the first big case, but in it the civil rights case was the
Rodriguez versus San Antonio Independent School
District and it was reversed. The lower court's decision was reversed by
the Supreme Court that favored for lower courts decisions was reversed by the
Supreme Court in a five to four vote. And I think that we have gone
downhill with the Supreme Court ever since. Keep in mind that President
Nixon appointed quite a few conservative Supreme Court Justices and
this has been continued by other
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89
presidents and the, the, in fact
some of them are more than just conservative and the fundamentalism has, has
taken over the court. And, and right now I, I think you would be laughed out of
court if you filed a desegregation court case similar to Brown versus Board of Education or any of the cases that I
participated in. There has been very little enforcement. The, the federal
Department of Justice and in some of those court cases has switched from a
plaintiff to the defendant, to a defendant and, and had defendant had the
status quos. Why did it fail? I think there are two reasons why these
desegregation court cases failed so miserably. One is that the brunt of
desegregation was placed on the minority population. And it was a minority
population that had to be transported to the white schools. Usually over the
argument that the white schools were physically superior to the minority
schools, and this is true. But anyway, the minority population carried the
brunt of the desegregation leading to kids attending school away from home,
very seldom were provisions made for kids participating in extra curricular
activities. No provisions were made for parental involvement in those remote
schools that the minority population were assigned to and there was very little
provision for emergency situations. And, and as a result, I think that the
minority populations were never extremely happy with the insulting
desegregation activity which was based mostly on minority kids being
transported. There is another reason and I think if, it was evidence
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90
since, since my involvement in, in desegregation. And that is that I,
I never really thought the Brown versus Board of
Education rationale that said if minorities are performing very poorly in
their schools and the white are performing very well, relatively speaking, in
their schools, that if you send the minority students to the white school, that
they will perform just like the whites. And the reason I don't buy that is
because the program itself is the curriculum, the methodology, the, the, the
whole operation is really the government's is, is also very racist and
prejudiced in that the minority populations did not perform like the whites
that are attending the, the, the schools before the desegregation court order.
In other words, felt it was physical desegregation, there was never
instructional integration. They were assigned to teachers who, who had certain
attitudes about the kids and, and, and apparently no training nor experience
dealing with those kids. And I think that there is something educational
practice was not conducive for increased performance on the part of the, the
minority kids. So, there has been an extensive amount of disillusionment about
desegregation as being a solution when the educational problems of minority
populations including the Mexican Americans.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Historically, children have outnumbered
available textbooks. Today, many children in many school districts don't have
textbooks. Why is that?
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|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Well, it's the, a conflict in, in the state policy. State
policy says that there is a book for every kid, but state policy also says that
kids should be working on, on their level and not have a, a, a, a book for the,
for the grade. In other words, if there is a book assigned to the fifth grade
and the kids who are not reading at the fifth grade level and they need a
fourth grade book or a third grade book, these are not made available for those
kids. So that the distribution of the books is one number, and one per grade
level in that the reading level, of the kids are not only that, but it creates
some problems if their kids were accelerated in the reading, it would create
logistic problems in the distribution of the books. I think that is just an
inefficiency on the part of the state in the administration of the textbook
program. The second thing is that the textbooks you are furnished with by the
state are relatively few. One per grade level. There is a lot of supplemental
materials which are available. But, in the state, in the state of
Texas these have to be purchased at local expense. And, of
course, we had the wide disparities and still have wide disparities between the
amount of funds available to low wealth school districts and high wealth school
districts. So, that in some of the high wealth school districts, teachers may
not even know where to put all of the supplemental materials which are
purchased whereas in the low wealth school districts, there are none.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Similarly,
Title 7, bi-lingual education is a statutory mandate.
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|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Yet there is more
children in almost every school district that does not receive that kind of
education that is mandated. Why has NABE or TABE or
LULAC or any other individuals stepped forward to sue? Is there no
basis?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Well,
there is, there is a basis. And yes, there was a suit here. In fact Senate Bill
477, which is the bi-lingual educational law was enacted as a result of
pressure from, originally was a, I guess, an IDRA suit, and then, it
became a, a, a MALDEF suit against the state of
Texas. The intervention motion, again in US
vs. Texas, in Judge Wayne Justice's court, a part of US
vs. Texas, and there, there just has been very little compliance.
Administrators don't believe in bi-lingual education. Remember that it was a
methodology and that it was developed not by the schools, but outside of the
schools. And they have rejected it ever since. Schools are tracted. They are
not very receptive to, to innovative ideas or practices. They did not provide
extensive financial support for the implementation of bi-lingual education
program. They still don't. And the school has seen other needs more important
than, than bi-lingual education or, or, or responding to the needs of limited
English proficient kids, so there had never been a very adequate implementation
of bi-lingual education programs in the state of Texas. And when you consider
that the, that the state of Texas is perhaps one of the better performing
states in bi-lingual education, you can imagine
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what is happening
in other states. And, and perhaps appreciate, as well as, understand the reason
for the opposition to bi-lingual education that has surfaced.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Today, 1998 how do you
characterize IDRA? What is it?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
IDRA is relatively the same
thing it was in 1973. It is a non-profit organization dedicated to the
improvement of educational opportunities for children. And we believe that
there are a lot of needs of, of children and we address those needs and attempt
to work with school districts through research and evaluation and training and
materials development and technical assistance in order to bring about improved
education for children.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
You don't see IDRA as a think tank or as a policy center? |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Yeah. I think a lot
of the research and, and, and evaluation that is conducted and the development
of materials and the development of training programs come as a result of the
think tank activity of the organization, but remember that it implements
programs. It is not just a think tank that, that thinks up solutions to
problems. We take those solutions and implement them in pilot programs
sometimes more extensively than pilot programs, but we do a lot of, of, of
development and implementation along the lines of, of re-conceptualize in our
think tank role.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Currently, what is it that you are doing in the Tucson
Unified School District?
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94
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
We are assisting the school
district in an evaluation of the bi-lingual education program in
Tucson where there is some of our public sentiment that they
should drop the bi-lingual education program. And I think we are doing a, a
research study, an evaluation study, and perhaps even research in Tucson to
determine why the program has not been success, as successful as, as, as they
wished it to be. And, and, and make recommendations to the school district for
the strengthening of the bi-lingual education program. We don't believe that,
that, that there is justification for the termination of the program. There is
certainly a lot of justification for the improvement of the program which is
the same thing you find in most school districts.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
What is the role of IDRA in the
context of leadership from a non-profit, from a staff led type of organization
to the Mexican American community?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Well, we, all right, a non profit organization with an
autonomous board and not a membership organization, but we have worked with the
leadership of, of, of Mexican American and other communities here in Texas and
throughout the country in bringing about improvement in educational
opportunities for kids. We work on a cooperative basis. We provide a lot of
technical assistance. And, and our technical assistance is not only to schools,
it is very frequently to community groups. We have done a lot of parent
education training for, for groups of parents in various communities really
throughout the
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country in order to improve their capacity, their
dealing with the school different. We have worked with community organizations
here and elsewhere. So, that we, we meet consistently with, with the
leadership. We have a lot of networking and we network with literally hundreds
of organizations and brain stormed on the, the, the responses of, for existing
problems.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Generally speaking, what is the most pressing issues facing the
Mexican American community?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Well, I think the most pressing issue, above everything
else, is education. I think that it is basic to everything. And, and until
Mexican Americans have access to better educational opportunity, I doubt that
they are going to resolve some of their problems in, in employment and
administration of justice and, and, and other areas. I, I, I think that, that,
that it is basic impact, I mean . . .. I am alarmed because the dropout rate of
Hispanics is really increasing in this country and in Texas. And you are going
to have an ethnic population that does not have the skills for survival in a
technological society such as the one that we are moving into, certainly be
characteristic of the twenty first century.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
In the area of U.
S.-Mexico relations, what is the role or what should it
ought to be of Mexican Americans toward Mexico and Mexico and
the government of Mexico toward Mexican Americans and others of Mexican
ancestry here?
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|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
I, I think we are, we ought to have a supportive and
cooperative role. When Doe versus Plylar was being
litigated and subsequently the multiple in district litigation, in which I
testified against the injustice of denying educational opportunity to
immigrants, undocumented immigrant children. I tried to enlist the, the
assistance of, of the Republic of Mexico. I had worked in
several cooperative programs with Mexico. At that time, Mexico was not
particularly interested. And now they, our IDRA staff, our executive
director, is a member of Solidarity, which is a group dedicated to improving
relations between Mexico and the Mexican American community in the United
States. I think that, that there should be a, a, a strong relationship. There
should be a mutual interest, a reciprocal interest, and there, there should be
reciprocal assistance also on the two entities.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Who was that office or individual that
rebuked you when you requested assistance?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
The consulate in San
Antonio at the time.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
No higher? You did not go to Mexico to meet with the
president of Mexico or . . .
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
. . .the Secretary of Education? |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Have you ever had those
meetings?
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|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Not, I have met with the, with the Secretary of
Education, yes. I have had a meeting through the auspices of the Carnegie
Foundation and talked about such things as mutually supportive
activities. But I, I have had contact with subsequent consul generals here in
San Antonio and who are much more interested and the government
is much more receptive than it was then.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
This reference to Solidarity, is that the
Fundacion de Solidaridad Mexicano
Americano ? (Mexican American Solidarity
Foundation?)
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
That is correct. |
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
OK. Who is the most effective Mexican
American leader today?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
I really don't know. I, I really don't know. I think
that, I have never been much for finding the, the teacher of the year, the best
teacher, good teachers or in the administrative. And here I think there are a
lot of good administrators . . . And the Mexican American leader, I think that
there are a lot of good Mexican Americans. I think that it would be very
difficult. I can give you a list of who I consider the most effective Mexican
Americans. I probably do some things, some people an injustice since I have had
limited participation nationwide for the last five years, and then, now and
retired employee of Inter-cultural Development Research Association.
But I, I, I wouldn't, I don't think it is even desirable to select somebody and
say that that is the most effective person today.
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|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Well, you offered to make a list. Would you take a stab at that?
Two leaders who are among those that you do on your list.
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Well, it's going to sound
something like the over-the-hill gang because these, these are the person,
persons that I work with, but certainly here in San Antonio
Maria, Dr. Maria Robledo Montecel, the person, executive
director of IDRA, I think, is somebody should, that should be
considered and here in San Antonio you have such people as
Blandina "Bambi" Cardenas who I think is, is, is one
of the most intelligent Mexican American persons I have ever met. You have
Raul Yzaguirre of Washington. You have people
throughout the country, so many that and, and, and I have been out of it for so
long that it is very hard. And I said that I would do an injustice to some,
some people, but there are very influential Mexican Americans. Mario
Obledo is being recognized, I saw in the paper this morning. I have a lot
of respect for Mario Obledo. I have worked with him in court cases and in
international education in California when he was Secretary of,
of Health, Education and Welfare, Health in California. Jose Angel
Gutierrez, I think, is a very formidable person. There are many
throughout the country. Josue Gonzalez in, in New York
City, Columbia University. Steve Arvizu in
California. I think that there are a lot of them. I remember
when I was superintendent of schools, I was probably the third Mexican American
appointed as superintendent of schools in the state of Texas
and, and in the country. Now, I think
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99
that there are a lot of them.
Some of them are very, very effective and they are in very high level positions
in, in education and in the corporate world. And I, I just could continue
brainstorming and thinking of people to put on that list, but I, I think there
are a lot of them. And as I said, I, I even find it distasteful to select one
person and say that person is the most effective or the best Hispanic or
Mexican American in the country.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
Do you know who was the first Mexican American
superintendent in Texas?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
I, I really don't know. It
could have been, one of the early ones was Rodolfo de La Garza
over in Rio Grande City. There was one in, in West
Oso around Corpus Christi. And I really don't know who
was "the" first Mexican American superintendent of Texas. Do you?
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
No. When you
were the third, do you remember who the second and others were, first was?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
I remember that
de La Garza preceded me. There was one named
Garza, who was originally from Laredo that had
worked as a superintendent of schools. And I can't think of any others in the
state of Texas or in the country.
|
| Dr.
Gutiérrez: |
All right. Getting back to those distasteful questions.
What is or which is the most effective Mexican American organization toady?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
I really don't
know.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
OK.
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100
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
If, if I had a, any inkling as to which one it is and
there was one that could be singled out, I would do so. I don't, I really don't
know which is the most effective organization today.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Believe it or not, I only
have one last question. You know your life and your contribution better than I.
I had tried to ask the questions and I have run out. Is there anything that you
consider significant or or that needs to be mentioned about some aspect of your
life or your contributions or your career that you should bring up that I
didn't ask because I didn't know?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Well, I think it's been a very long conversation and we
have talked about a lot of things. I don't know. I, I think that there are
certain aspects of the career with the early Mexican American superintendent of
schools. In fact, it may shock some people that I was the first Mexican
American administrator in the Edgewood School District in 1955.
School district at that time was about eighty five to ninety percent Hispanic
and I was the first Hispanic administrator when I became vice principal of
Edgewood High School. I did spend fifteen years in which I was
probably the dominant Mexican American in education in this country. And the
reason I say that is because I, I attended hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
meetings throughout the country. And in many of the meetings I was the only
Hispanic member there. But then, I was in a very unique position having and
then this is why I got so involved in educational issues on a national level. I
was
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101
one of the few Mexican Americans that had been or was a
superintendent of schools. One of the few Mexican Americans that had their
Doctorate degree from an accredited and highly recognized university. I was one
of the few Mexican Americans that had a very strong educational, education
background. By that I mean I had taught elementary school, junior high, and
high school, taught college, was a departmental chairman in education, had
taught at the largest universities here in, in, and in many throughout the
country and, and I just had a, a lot of experience that, that was supplied.
And, and like I said, sometimes if nothing else, for support and, and company,
I wished that other Mexican Americans would have been included in hundreds of
those meetings that I attended all over the United States in which I was the
only superintendent, the only Mexican American in, in, not superintendent,
Mexican American superintendent in, in these, in many years. Finally, I just
couldn't keep the pace anymore. I, I was attending too many meetings all over
the country and all over the world and, and I had to curtail my activities.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Here toward
the end of the interview, I am just curious. You started using the word
Hispanic more often than ever in, in the entire conversation. What is your
opinion about this labeling of being Chicano or Mexican American,
Latin-American, Latino, Hispanic, other?
Page:
102
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
I say I use probably both. I,
I just base my feelings on which were expressed by a friend of mine,
Senator Joe Bernal, when he says, "I really don't care
what you call me, just say it with affection. "
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
I, I think we forgot in
the very early part of the interview, on the biographical section, who your
children are and what they are doing?
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Well, I have a, five children and they are all doing very
well, thank you. They are all grown. They, they are all very successful. I am
just, I have got one son that is a pediatrician, practicing here in San
Antonio, has a very, very big pediatric practice. I have got another
son that is a surgeon here in San Antonio.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Can we get names of them?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Joe,
Jr. is, is the pediatrician. Michael Anthony, my son,
Cardenas is, is a surgeon. Chris that, that works in dental
supplies, and then, there is Christina who is working for
Xerox.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Chris is different than Christina? |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Yeah. Uh huh. |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
And then, there is
Laurita, Aya, who is . . .
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Aya? A-Y-A? |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Well, she couldn't say Laura,
so she said her name was Aya and that just stuck. It is a nickname.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Oh, that's a
nickname. I thought it was a second name.
Page:
103
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Laurita
Ester who is a teacher in the Spring Branch Independent School
District in, in the Houston area. All of them have done
very well in college and, and all but one had, have college degrees. Many of
them have several college degrees including Doctorates and Master's degrees.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Well, I want
to thank you for the generous amount of time.
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
And you didn't ask me, but my
wife is Laura Tobin Cardenas.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
Well, she was mentioned before. What do
you know about her or any other wives . . .?
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
That's why I work and
supportive. I don't think that I could have done this, much as I did, or be
involved in so much activity without the tremendous support that she has always
provided.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Anything else? |
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Se acabo
. . ..(It's over . . ..)
|
| Dr.
Cárdenas: |
Colorin Colorado,
el cuento esta acabado . . . [Mexican rhyme]
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
I, I know you . . .. |
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
. . .el que no se levanta se queda pegado.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Yeah, you, you mentioned that and recited that once before. I know
that you have a lot of publications and I am going to order the ones that are
in your resume, but remember again, this is your archive. I know you made
mention of the Benson Collection. I suppose you are putting your papers there?
Is, is that what you meant?
Page:
104
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez: |
If there is anything that
you want to add to this today or tomorrow or any other day, please feel free to
do it.
|
| Dr. Cárdenas: |
Thank
you, Jose.
|
| Dr. Gutiérrez:
|
Thank you. |
|
