THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Tejano Community Advisory Committee Meeting
INTERVIEW WITH: Josie Alvarado, Mrs. Tita Jaramillo,
Steve Hay, Sergio Hernandez
DATE: 16 October 1994
PLACE: Lubbock, Texas
INTERVIEWER: Laurie Gudzikowski
G: .... we're in Lubbock, Texas, and this is October 16, 1994, and this is Laurie Gudzikowski, doing an interview with people at the St. Joseph's Church and we're talking about the Tejano culture in Lubbock, Texas. You all saw some ... have some information about what we're trying to do here in this ... in our exhibit. One of the things we have been doing is going to different places around the state to find out if there are differences in the culture between the different geographical areas of the state and if there is some way that we can put those differences in our exhibit. And when we were in El Paso ... El Paso is a community that 80% Hispanic ... lots of people there speak Spanish ... there's a real active interchange across the border. I think that Lubbock has kind of a real different situation. So ... can we talk a little bit about what the situation for Tejanos is like in Lubbock, Texas? Josie?
Josie: It's a lot different from South Texas. And I think the population here differs from that area and it started with what? ... maybe in the early 1900s ... like in 1917 ... 1918 ... when the first Hispanics came to the Lubbock area ... that I have read on or that my mother and my grandparents have told me about.
G: Uh-huh.
Josie: And this ... people came from New Mexico. And they came to work in the railroad industry. So it's not ... it's not the same as ... in fact we were considered Spanish ...
G: Uh-huh.
Josie: ... and it was not Mexican. And we had a very difficult time dealing with those two different names ... as far as ... what are you? ... are you Spanish or are you Mexican? And we were even prejudice as far with ... when we would hear of other people from Mexico because we were considered like Spanish from New Mexico. And so a lot of the people at first came to Lubbock came from the New Mexico area. They brought with them their culture ... their different ways of cooking ... and it was very different from what it is now. Now we've had ... like in the '50s I believe ... we had a lot of people coming in from South Texas which came from Mexico and they migrated up here picking cotton. So it's been an experience growing up with that.
G: Now ... has your family been here for generations, Josie?
Josie: My family has been here since ...
Mother: 1919.
Josie: ... 1919.
G: You're Josie's mother? Is that right?
Mother: But I was born here in .......... ... I'm 72 ... I Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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was born in 1922.
G: And so your parents came to ....
Mother: From New Mexico.
G: ... to Lubbock in 1919. And was there a large group of people who came in at that time?
Mother: No ... not very large. I think there were about maybe 4 families.
G: Okay. So you were a very small minority here.
Mother: Uh-huh ... oh, yes.
G: And did you ....
Mother: Lubbock it was a very, very small town.
G: And where you ... if you were such a small group of people ... were you able ... did your groups speak the Spanish language and were you able to keep that language alive in your families? How was that possible?
Mother: I don't know but we have all ... as far as I can remember we would always speak English and Spanish. And our kids were brought up that way.
G: Speaking English and Spanish.
Steve: Did you see the large migration from Mexico and South Texas ....... cotton ... Josie said the '50s ... I thought it was earlier than that?
Mother: Oh, yes, it was.
Steve: Was it in the '20s ... '30s ... '40s?Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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Mother: It was in 19 ... it was in 1940 ... '41 ... when the people from South Texas came down to pick cotton.
G: I think it must have continued for quite some time. This morning we were at a community meeting in Abernathy and we were with people who ... the group I was with everyone of them had come to this area as a child from South Texas as a migrant worker and had settled here and they were people who'd come in here in the '40s and '50s ... some as late as the '60s ... so I take it this migration lasted for 20 or 30 years. Is that right?
Steve: Most people come for work wherever they migrate to.
G: Uh-huh.
Steve: Where they ... you know ... I know back in the early '80s when we came people were coming from Michigan ...
G: Uh-huh.
Steve: ... to Texas and the reason that they were coming is not because they loved Texas is that they came to work.
G: Sure.
Steve: And same reason for folks coming here ... is that they had ... there were jobs and ... you know ... mechanization of cotton really didn't come in until the 19 ... what? ... '50s ... '60s ... '70s?
Josie: No ... probably around the '70s. The ... when they ...
Steve: Cotton picking.Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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..: Oh, yeah.
Josie: ... stopped ... stopped the cotton picking. And they started with the mechines.
Steve: Yeah. So you have ... the real drawing card as I understand it for the Mexican and Chicano folks to come up here was cotton. Because there's ... like in these 25 counties ... there's 4 million acres of ... like things that are tilled ... planted. Three million is cotton and then the other is silo ... and milo and other things. And before there was no machines to do all that.
G: I was talking to a woman this morning who said she remember picking cotton. The last year she picked cotton was the year Kennedy was assassinated ... that's 1963 ... so there was still hand-picking of cotton up until into the '60s. This woman was picking cotton as a child in the '60s in the fields here.
Steve: This particular neighborhood here too is interesting because ... I guess the history has been written about high mortality rate in the Guadalupe neighborhood before 1970 and you know 'way back ... you know ... '30s ... '40s ... '50s and '60s ... because this was a very, very poor area ... very poor neighborhood and I know some of the research was done through St. Joseph's and the death records would show the unusual high number of infants that died here because of poor nutrition and no sanitation ... the discrimination was absolutely Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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unbelievable ...
G: Now I ...
Steve: ... in this section of Texas.
G: I was given to understand that there was a tornado here in 19 ...
Steve: '70.
G: ... '70 that pretty much leveled this area and it was re-built with much more substantial homes. Were you here at the time of the tornado?
..: Uh-huh.
G: Would you like to talk about that at all? Or is that something that you don't feel is something that's relevant to ... ?
Mother: Well, it was really very bad ... you know ... very scary. But it came as a surprise to me. I was reading a book and I had 2 little grandchildren and my next door neighbor were the Lopez and I told her ... it looked like a cauldron ... I said it looked like it's going to rain. And then the hail that came was so heavy ... so big you know ... and I said that the hail is so big. Well, she said, we have nice homes ... nothing like this can hurt us. Within about ... I'd say 5 minutes ... we didn't have a thing.
G: Um. And the ... were there substantial changes in the community? Other than the fact that new houses were built as Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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a result of this tornado. Did people move to different areas?
Josie: There was a big displacement of the ... before the tornado there were like 3 different groups of where the Hispanic population was ... there was the barrio ... which is this area right now ... there was the barrio .......... which was across from the tracks ...
G: Okay.
Josie: ... and that was another group of Hispanics. In fact that's where our family lived ... in that area. And then there was ... maybe an Arnett Benson area ... not as heavily populated as it is now ... so what happened was that after the tornado they started re-building and buying off some of the homes ...
G: Uh-huh.
Josie: ... so people were just moving. They panicked ... they moved to East Lubbock because there were a lot of empty homes over there ...
G: Uh-huh.
Josie: ... they moved over there ... some of the moved to the Arnett Benson area ... in fact my mother moved to this area.
G: Uh-huh.
Josie: So people moved out of their neighborhoods. And that's when they lost the closeness of the communities. Because we ... before it was known as ... this community was El BarrioTejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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... and so everybody was very close ... everybody knew each other and could help each other out. And then after that ... it was ... everybody got displaced.
G: Sergio ... you're younger than anyone else here ... I don't imagine that you're old enough to remember the tornado of ...
Sergio: No ... I wasn't here.
G: ... in 1970 ... you weren't ... you probably weren't even born ... right?
Sergio: Probably for me I could only vouch like what you said about the differences here and El Paso.
G: Uh-huh.
Sergio: I was born and raised in El Paso and I've been living here in Lubbock for 3 years.
G: Okay. Very good.
Sergio: So I can see ...
G: You'll be able to good ...
Sergio: ... some of the differences ... I was just writing them down ... like I could see ... when I grew up in El Paso it was a lot of manufacturing ... that's all.
G: Uh-huh.
Sergio: And from what I gather here and from the people that ... you know ... there was a lot of farming ... most of the people ... it's like I compare myself and I see myself with the generation that's here ... the older generation ...Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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G: Uh-huh.
Sergio: ... we're very alike ... you know ... the young generation coming from El Paso ... from the border ... are very like the older generation ... because like my father everybody else just spoke Spanish ... no one speaks it ... no one spoke English ... not bilingual ... or like you said you were reading ... my parents ... I never see them reading a book. You know when I came here I could see the differences ... everybody was a little more educated ... they were advanced and I guess I could see that's why ... I mean each generation ... you know ... how it's much alike as the generation before that ... the more you go into the country. And like some of the differences that I saw ... just detailed differences were like in music and food ...
G: What's the difference in music?
Sergio: Some of the difference in music ... like Tejano music ... I guess ... you know ... passes a lot of ... that's really influenced by the Mexican music ...
G: Uh-huh.
Sergio: ... and even though it's kind of ... it's kind of changed in El Paso ... the music ... but it's still ... it's still very like the Mexican music. But a lot of Tejano music isn't really listened to in El Paso.
G: Okay. And in Lubbock?Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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Sergio: Here it's all Tejano music ... it's coming from San Antonio ...
G: I see.
Sergio: ... but as well they also have their own local bands ... you really ...
G: Are the local ... ?
Sergio: ... have their own type of ...
G: What is ... is their a country influence ... what is the ... rock and roll ... what is the influence in Lubbock?
Sergio: There's ... nowadays ... nowadays some of that I see is a lot of Hispanics going to country music and singing regular country music but in Spanish.
G: Ah ... okay.
Sergio: And then trying ... it's starting to make a connection now with just regular Tejano music.
G: So in Lubbock there's a ... more of a country influence in the Tejano music?
Steve: You have a very strong Northern Mexico music influence. There are 4 or 5 Spanish radio stations in this community ...
G: Really? That's a lot.
Steve: ... which for the size of this town that's a lot. And 2 if not 3 of them are directed toward the immigrant population. See ... in this area the Immigration/ Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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Naturalization Service had an office here in Lubbock and 26 thousand people applied for amnesty and 99 percent of them were from Mexico.
G: Uh-huh.
Steve: So that means that they came from these 50 to 80 counties around here ... we do that work so we know ... like Catholic Family Services ... and they resided here ... not folks that got up and left ... they're here ... half of those 26 applied through agriculture and half through their time ... they were here since '82.
G: Uh-huh.
Steve: They keep coming back and many of them are still in agriculture. The big scare was they'd get their visa and go to the city and get job ... that's not true ... a lot of them stayed working in agriculture. But the point is that there's still a very heavy Norteno tradition here and a lot of inmigrantes ... a lot of immigrants ... recent immigrants ... who are now ... many of them are becoming citizens ... we give citizenship tests every month at our agency and we average 30 or 40 people every month applying to become US citizens.
G: Would you tell me what your agency is for the tape?
Steve: Catholic ... Catholic Family Services ... Catholic Charities.
G: Catholic Family Services ... Catholic Charities.Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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Steve: Catholic Charities. So that ... you know ... the immigrant population is ... ....... Lubbock is 24 percent Hispanic in 1990 census ... and I would imagine that it's going to be ... I'd say closer to 30 percent by the next census ... which will be in 5 more years. It's growing very quickly.
G: Sergio, you said you moved here 3 years ago ... did you move ... we were just talking ... people move to places for work ... why did you come here?
Sergio: It was to go to school here ... Texas Tech.
G: Just to go to school here ... so you're going to school at Tech.
Sergio: At Tech.
G: Do you intend to stay in Lubbock area when you finish with Tech or you've got your sights set on other places?
Sergio: Well, I plan to study ... stay as long as I can ... probably until maybe a PhD ...
G: Uh-huh.
Sergio: ... or a masters ... but I'm probably hoping to go work on the East Coast.
G: Okay.
Sergio: Rather than returning to El Paso. ........ to settle down ... I'm most likely for sure coming to Texas.
G: Okay.
Sergio: Like another thing I was talking about ... like food Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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differences ... I'm working right now at dining halls at Texas Tech and I work at the one where they have the Mexican line ...
G: Uh-huh.
Sergio: ... and some differences that I see ... like a lot of people are really from El Paso ... like students ...
G: Uh-huh.
Sergio: ... and they tell me ... why don't they this? ... or why don't they have that? ... because they don't really have the food that we're used to eating in El Paso.
G: Uh-huh.
Sergio: You know ... it's similar but it's not like ... it's not exact ... but like menudo ... a little detail like a lot of people here eat it with tortillas ... with flour tortillas ...
G: Uh-huh.
Sergio: ... and over there back home we eat it with bread.
..: Right.
Sergio: ................ (franciscitos?)
G: Uh-huh.
Sergio: So that's one of the differences that I see.
G: Uh-huh.
Sergio: But ...
Steve: Do you find many Anglos going through the Mexican Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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line ..... ?
Sergio: (laughter) The majority are.
Steve: Is that right? See I think that's been a big influence too. What's beautiful here in Texas is that ... especially the Mexican culture has influenced the popular dominant culture ...
G: Oh enormously.
Steve: ... and there's so much integration ... you know ... with the food and the dichos and the sayings and the dress ... the guayaberas ... and everything else ... I think it's really beautiful.
Josie: We're still having ... one of things that you were saying about the immigrants ... is that a lot of them from South Texas are planning ... or plan to travel like to ... more towards the northern part of Texas ... like Pantha (?Panther?)... that area there for agricultural reasons ... and as they are coming through ... Lubbock is the biggest town ... and so a lot of them stay in Lubbock ... and don't continue ... or on their way back they'll stop in Lubbock. So we're having a lot of people from South ... South Texas ... staying in the Lubbock area.
G: Well, the group that I talked to this morning everyone of them had come to Lubbock working with agriculture and not a single one of them work in agriculture at the present time Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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... uh? ... they had moved on to running small businesses ... working in the schools ... doing all kinds ... any number of different things. And they were again saying that this immigration still continues ... there's still migrant people who come ...
Steve: Where they're showing the magnitute of it though ... we have a common friend ... Father Curtis Hoffmann ... who was the pastor here in town many years ... he was down in Lamesa which is 40 ... 50 miles straight down the road ... and back in the '50s they used to ... there was a big migrant labor camp there that had as many as 20 or 30 thousand people that would come up from Mexico every year to pick cotton.
G: Uh-huh.
Steve: So I mean ... you know when you replace those folks with machinery you're not going have nearly as many people working agriculture ...
G: That's right.
Steve: I find that most of the inmigrantes now are working with the gins ... they come in for the ginning season ... which is starting now and will last through December. And many have gone over to the .......... where ... the processing of cattle ... the mataderos ... the meat ...
Josie: .........
G: The stockyards?Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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..: Stockyards.
Steve: ... no ... the meat-packing places ...
G: No ... oh ... meat-packing.
Steve: ... where the kill the cattle and everything. You have an awful lot of the immigrants now who are working in those things. I mean they're ... but they are legalized ... they came in and got legalized through amnesty but they work in those.
Josie: But they're still having ... they still have ... what? ... tomatoes ... potatoes ... the onions ... and ...
G: Yeah ... that which ...
Josie: ... still continues.
Steve: In the North part.
Josie: More in the North.
G: Mrs. .......... you've been here all of your life ... you've seen the Hispanic population grow from something that was very small to a significant proportion of the community ... when ... do you remember what the feeling was of the old-timers when the people first started coming in ... was there resentment or ... welcoming ... or what? What kind of ..... ?
Mother: Well ... as far as I can remember ... see ... I was born here ............ about 9 miles from here and then we went on the Crosby and then we moved back here to Lubbock in 1925.
G: Uh-huh.
Mother: And what I remember when Lubbock was very small and Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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the people were all real close ...
G: Uh-huh.
Mother: ... because everybody knew everybody ... you know ... there were not that many people at home.
G: Uh-huh.
Mother: All around here there were no houses. And then when all these other people started moving in ... well ... I think we accepted them pretty good.
G: Did you feel like they were strengthening your position in the community or diluting it or ...?
Mother: It never did bother me. I used to work ... I think when I was about 14 years old in a cafe ... down at R.............. ... and there were all these people coming in ... and they were all very nice people.
G: Uh-huh.
Mother: Very nice people. And I got along with with all of them. Of course a lot of times they would tell me that I would serve more juice than chili meat. (laughter) But then I went on from there and I got a job as a cashier in a theater.
G: Uh-huh.
Mother: And from there I started having a family and setting to be a housewife.
G: Uh-huh.
Steve: I think the church has played a very important role Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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in the Hispanics in West Texas. It's one of the things they felt comfortable with coming from Mexico ... coming from other parts of the United States ... they could relate to ... generally I think there was ... they tried to have like ... misa en espanol ... no? ... this was a mother church right ... St. Joseph's. And ... the other important thing I think is because the discrimination was so terrible ... you know ... separate ... I mean just outright prejudice ... just terrible stuff ... that I think the church was very helpful leading the way towards social justice and helping people get organized and encouraging them to have a voice and to oppose the system and to get people elected to ... you know ... like in San Antonio ... COPS etc ... I really feel that the church has played a big role. And spiritually also in the social justice area.
G: I was talking to a lady before we started and she was talking about how the swimming pools used to be segregated and rather than integrate them they closed the pools. Do you have any rememberances of that kind of thing?
Josie: I still remember as a child going into a movie theater and they wouldn't let us sit in ... in the bottom part ... we had to go upstairs. And even going into some of the restuarants ... we had to go through the backdoor and order and my mother definitely saw a lot of discrimination. We saw discrimination in the schools. We saw discrimination in jobs. We saw Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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discrimination in places where would eat and some of the department stores would even have 2 different water fountains.
G: Uh-huh.
Josie: And ...
Mother: (laughter) One had White and the other one ...
Josie: Colored. And were just like ... which one do we chose?
G: I was going to say ... is there a significant white population here in this area so that ....?
Steve: It's about 80 percent.
G: So that's much smaller.
Steve: It's roughly 12 thousand people out of 190 thousand people ........
Josie: But we were like right in the middle. Like I said my mother saw that more in her days. There was a lot of discrimination.
Mother: It was very, very bad.
Steve: What I think ... what really helped was when ... well, it's such a growing population and I think that ... and on the mural in the park ............ ... one of the things that this community thought and I'm sure you were involved in and maybe Joseph too ... is that they ............. cotton ...... but also education. And I think that through education ... like Josie is a ... not only a nurse ... but a nurse practioner ... Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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we have now ... what? ... 25 ... 30 attorneys here in town ... some from El Paso ... who went to Tech but they stayed here and are practicing ... Chicanos ... Hispanics ... where there is only like one Black attorney. Hispanics have done much better professionally as far as really getting education ... staying here. And also they've advocated to break up this single-member district stuff so that you have ... I mean ... at-large voting ...
G: I was going to say ... do you want at-large voting? Or do you want single-member district?
Steve: No ... no ... it was at-large and therefore ...
G: Okay ... so now you have single-member.
Steve: Yeah ... and if you have ... if you're a minority of course you don't have a voice. So they advocated by suing the system ... with the help of groups out of San Antonio ... Southwest Voter Registration ... etc ... and now there's an elected county commissioner ... there's 2 minorities on the city council ... there's 2 minorities on the school board. And not only here ... once it happened here ... like around in 1980 ... '82 ... all these small communities started doing the same thing ... they started suing the systems so that they could have districts and then have a voice in their systems. So it's just been a kind of a snowball thing.
G: Yeah. I know in San Antonio that voter participation has Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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been the key to the enormous political power that Hispanics have ... do you think that's the key to the system here in Lubbock too? Because I different places it works different ways. What do you think, Josie?
Josie: I think so. One of the things that ...... mentioned just a little before this ... and you had mentioned it, Steve, on the mortality rate ... and that ties in with the discrimination also ... of infants. There were hospitals here in town that would refuse to give services for the poor ... and there were people that were known to go into emergency rooms and their ... the family member died because of not being ... of not being attended to. So there was a lot of that.
G: Has Tech played a role in it ... because Tech is a big part of this community ... has Tech played a role in helping this integration or has it been a reactionary force? What do you all think?
Josie: I think that Tech in a sense has helped because a lot of students come in ... like say you're coming in from El Paso and then decided to stay here ... and we have gotten others that come in from other areas ... not so much students from this area ... but from the South ... a lot of them have come in ... and become doctors and have stayed in this area ... so that definitely I feel is a positive.
Steve: I think it's ........ too. Just what you say. The Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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records pretty poor on minority recruitment ... I think it's one of the ... you can correct me ... I think it's only about 7 or 8 percent ... which is real poor ... but a lot of the Hispanic folks work at Tech and they get good jobs and many of them have gotten promotions and they have very, very good jobs and they've furthered their education along with that. Also like for instance ... Eddie Consino ... Eddie and I ... you know ... what is that? ...
Josie: LEARN.
Steve: ... LEARN is an organization that recuits minority students from all the small towns to get them into Tech. And they identify them and they help them and give them classes and they ....... for scholarships ........... ... I think that Tech that way ... many side effects it's helping. I do think that ... I don't think it has a good track record for recruitment ... minority recruitment though.
G: Sergio, what can you say?
Sergio: When he refers to recruitment we had a meeting last ... I think it was 2 days ago ... and one of the Board of Regents came and he wanted to discuss about recruitment. What most of the people thought was it real ... they had poor recruitment here just in town itself. He said a lot of people are coming in from Houston and San Antonio but they're not really getting all the people from in-town ... from here. And I think it's Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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really just more of the way the city's built then they way the educational system's working here. Because I see ... we have a lot of programs and the Hispanic Student's Society where we go and tutor at the Community Centers and at the elementary schools ... like ... ........... and we see a lot of lack of interest in the students ... what we try to do is just be a kind of a mentor kind of thing ...
G: Uh-huh.
Sergio: ... kind of a program we're doing right now. And I see just a lack of interest and that's why a lot of people from in-town aren't going into Tech. But I think ... I see Tech has a good influence on this town because a lot of students from out-of-town are coming in and studying here and they're liking this enviornment of Lubbock because it's much smaller as compared to El Paso and San Antonio and they think ... it's like ... I think Lubbock makes ... they only way where the Hispanic community is rising is because it's so strong ... it's educated as compared to the one in El Paso ... which is a majority ... but not everybody is very educated ... you know ... when it comes to percentage-wise.
G: Uh-huh.
Sergio: So I think that's what makes Lubbock strong and .......... has a strong minority and it's real educated.
G: We're almost to the end of the tape here so I'm going to Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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stop the tape and turn it over so we don't run out right in the middle of our conversation ... so we're going to have a tiny little break here while I turn the tape over ... okay?
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 1, ABOUT .. MINUTES.
SIDE 2.
Steve: ......
Josie: ......
G: This morning when we were in Aberthany we were talking to people and these were people who mostly had come in here as migrant workers, but mostly had been educated here in this area and people that I was talking to said that they had no feeling of belonging in the schools. That they went to the schools but they were treated like they didn't belong. That they weren't really part of the culture of the school. Now I know in San Antonio in the years ... well ... back in the 1920s probably ... there were separate schools in the Spanish communities that were run ... not formal schools ... many were ... many private schools ... some of them were run out of homes ... they were called escuelas and they were ... or escuelitas ... the little schools ... and a lot of the older people in San Antonio remember them with great nostalgia and great joy of having had this opportunity and they would educate people ......... Spanish language and it was an alternate means of education because they were not ... because of the Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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discrimination in the schools ... was there a similar kind of thing here in Lubbock?
Josie: More so here in Lubbock probably. That there was a lot of discrimination. One of the things that was happening was that professors or teachers for a long time and it's beginning to change and it hasn't been that long that it changed ... was that they were encouraging their students to go into vocational ...
G: Uh-huh.
Josie: ... studies. And it was like ...
Steve: ..... Spanish ......
Josie: Uh-huh. For Hispanic ...
G: So tracking them away from college.
Josie: They would say ... you need to get into the ... the advisors would say ... you need to get into cosmetology for the girls and the boys go to workshop and ...
G: Learn auto mechanics ... something ....
Josie: Auto mechanics and they used to almost brainwash 'em into telling them ... now you've got to be realistic. And by being realistic meant that this was the only jobs you were going to have. Until ... like parents ... like myself that came out from this other generation ... that we started telling our kids because we remembered what they would tell us in school and we started saying no, no, no. Finishing school was graduating Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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from high school and it was ... you know ... you will be finished with school. And they would tell us in school ... you know ... if you can only finish school ... and then go into to this. And for ... we started working with our own kids and saying ... no, finishing school does not mean the 12th grade. But I think that it differs from here and San Antonio is that San Antonio was largely Hispanic and we were ... are from South Texas ... and we were just a small percentage ...
G: Uh-huh.
Josie: ... so they identified us as being just menial workers.
..: ............
Steve: One of the principals here ... Lucy Guitierrez ... Lucy Brown now ... over at Ramirez Elementary ... when she got out of Tech ... she went through Tech ... she's from Abernathy by the way ... she went through Tech ... and she went down to ................... school district to apply for a job ... she walked in and a woman ... an Anglo woman was there ... a receptionist ... and Lucy says ... I'm here to apply for a job ... I saw it in the paper. And the woman gave her an application form ... she noticed her sitting down ... sitting down filling it out ... said ... The last time that you worked your duties included please check ... cleaning floors ... mopping ... etc ... and Lucy went up and said ... Gee, I think I might have Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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the wrong application. The woman said ... Well, you're applying for this for a maintenance person, aren't you? And Lucy said ... No, I graduated from Tech, I'm applying to ... for a teaching position. And the woman gave her an application for teacher. But immediately the fact that she's Hispanic she just thought she was maintenance you know. And that was not as you say that long ago ... that's maybe 15 years ago ... 15 or so ago. But now there's been a change because Ralph Madrid ... Hispanic ... was hired as a recruiter for the Lubbock Independent School District and this was what? 10 or 15 years ago?
Josie: About.
Steve: And what you see now ... you have a lot of Hispanic teachers. The problems outside in all these small communities ... 'cause now with immigration and the birth rate you have more Hispanic kids in all ... than you do Anglo kids ... in these schools and yet you don't have any Hispanic teachers. Because the Hispanic kids that go to college don't want to go back and live in the small towns. So you have all Anglo teachers out there. So you don't have any real good role models for those ... for the rural Hispanic kids to ... you know ... get into some profession ... that's a problem.
Sergio: One story I heard also ... 2 days ago this president of a sorority here at Tech ... she's from ........ that's a town close to Lubbock ... and she said that when she was Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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graduating she was the second ... ranked second in her class and her counselor had told her that she would not be able to make it at Tech and for her not to apply. And she had ... you know ... she was discouraged you know from doing it and she said ... Well, my parents told me to do it so I did it anyway. And I think ... I mean ... that happens ... I mean that's just one ... just one person.
G: Still happens ... still happening today.
Sergio: Still happening today ... a lot of discouragement.
G: When you were a child and attend ... attending school what kind of school did you attend?
Mother: Okay, well, when we went to pull cotton in Rawlins one year they didn't allow us in their school. They were all White and they didn't allow us to go to school. So we had to come back to Lubbock to go to school.
G: Uh-huh. And in Lubbock what kind of a school did you go to? Did you go to a public school or a ....?
Mother: .........
G: And were there many Hispanic children in the school?
Mother: Uh-huh. They were all Spanish.
Josie: They had a separate ...
G: So it was a separate school.
Josie: It was a separate school and it was called ....... Escuelita.Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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Mother: We used to go to school down here ... at that time there was a Methodist Church and it was just a big room ... in there all the grades went in that room.
G: Uh-huh. How large a school was this then? How many children would have been in each grade?
Mother: 4 or 5 probably.
G: Okay. Okay. So it was a small ... a small group.
Mother: Real small.
G: And what did you have? Separate teachers for each grade or did you have one teacher for several?
Mother: I think ... we must have had 1 or 2 teachers for all the grades.
G: Okay. So it was sort of on the nature of a one-room schoolhouse.
Mother: Then later on when they built where the Catholic ... where the Catholic ...
Steve: Family Services?
Mother: Okay ... they had 3 rooms ... or 2 rooms ... and there were 1st, 2nd, 3rd in one room. And then they didn't come up but to the 6th grade but we never did get up to there.
G: Uh-huh. How far did you go in school?
Mother: I just went to the 3rd grade.
G: Okay.
Mother: But I made it on my own.Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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G: Uh-huh.
Mother: I have always had good jobs ... retired from TI here in Lubbock in '65 and I learned by myself.
G: So you had to be self-educated to become educated in your age group.
Steve: I think another thing in the history of this area with Hispanics is that in a sense Hispanics are a double minority ... they're a minority ethnic-wise you know ... dominant Anglo culture. But also religion-wise ... in the Bible Belt ... this is the Bible Belt ... very heavy Bible Belt. And the Catholic Church and all this stuff that's thought about the Catholic Church and I even have ... I was at a ........ meeting about a month ago ... I do the grant writing for our agency and I went over ... I applied for a federal grant and one of the county comm.... ... one of the county commissioners he was ... from one of the surrounding counties asked me ... Now Steve, he says, this money is coming ... you're going to use this money not just for Catholics are you? I said ... I was shocked that the guy would ask that question ... I said ... First of all, sir, this is federal money and no federal money can just be used for any ethnic group or any religious group ... it's for everybody. And I said ... We serve people regardless of religion or ethnicity or anything. But even today you find ... we got funded 3 years ago by United Way the first time ... Tejano Community Meetings - Lubbock, Texas
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Catholic Family ... Catholic Charities ... and they immediately got phone calls when it was announced through the paper and there were some very prominent business people ...
..: Break time ... okay.
Steve: ... very prominent business people in Lubbock called United Way and said they would never give another penny to United Way because they were funding Catholic Family Services.
G: Okay. And with that we will take a break and we will come back in ...
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 2, ABOUT .. MINUTES.