In November 1916, the San Antonio-based newspaper
La Prensa, the top-selling Spanish-language newspaper in the United States, launched a series on the “serious and transcendental problem” of discrimination against Mexican students across Texas schools. The newspaper condemned the Texas Council of Education’s policy to segregate Mexican children for not speaking English, while allowing children from other immigrant groups to integrate into classes with Anglo children.
La Prensa’s contributors understood that this segregation went beyond language discrimination. Like African American children in the Jim Crow South, Mexican children were purposely placed in schools with poor facilities and resources. Mexican and Mexican American children also encountered the problem of forced assimilation in their schools, where corporal punishment was common for speaking Spanish.
La Prensa’s contributors, intellectual elites forced out of Mexico during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), recognized the importance of learning English, but they also urged immigrant parents to teach their children Spanish and share their pride in their cultural heritage. Despite their efforts, language discrimination continued in Texas, but during the Chicano Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Mexican American students finally attained bilingual education.
Historians have thoroughly examined the Chicano struggle for inclusive education, but scholars are now focusing on the segregated Mexican Schools of the early twentieth century. My paper analyzes the work of Mexican community leaders in San Antonio against the educational discrimination of their children in the 1910s and 1920s. They paved the way for broader educational access in later decades, while also emphasizing the importance of retaining Spanish. Meanwhile, organizations such as LULAC worked for educational access while promoting cultural assimilation. La Prensa’s focus on Spanish retention set it apart from the dominant assimilationist discourse of the time, complicating the historical narrative on Mexican American identity in Texas during these decades.
