El Magonista | Vol. 10, No. 16 | April 22, 2022

On a spring morning, Sylvia Mendez walked into an eighth-grade history classroom in Santa Ana and began a talk she’d given hundreds of times before. At 85 years old, she held steady with a cane.

Her voice was soft but her message strong. 

“Never get distracted,” she told the students in front of her. “You have to fight for what you want.”

Seventy-five years ago this month, Mendez’s parents and four other Orange County families won the landmark class-action court case Mendez, et al. vs. Westminster School District of Orange County, allowing her to leave the neglected “Mexican school” she was forced to attend and enroll in a whites-only school with a beautiful playground she still remembers with a smile.

The case helped lead to the desegregation of California schools and influenced the legal arguments that were used in Brown vs. Board of Education seven years later, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that separate schools based on race were unconstitutional.

The Brown decision is well known. Less well known is how segregationist policies pushed Latino students into substandard schools throughout the Southwest.

That is the story that, for decades, Mendez has dedicated herself to telling — to ensure that the story of her parents’ fight is not forgotten. She’s traveled across the country to speak with students, including frequent stops here, at Mendez Fundamental Intermediate School. It was named for her family... READ MORE

President Biden has been mired in a stretch of disappointing polls, but recent surveys suggest he’s having particular trouble keeping the support of Hispanic voters.

A Quinnipiac University poll published this week found that just 26 percent of Hispanic voters surveyed approved of Biden’s job performance, the lowest mark of any demographic group.

A drastic decrease in support among Hispanic voters could foreshadow a disastrous midterm election for Biden and Democrats, particularly after that bloc seemed to sour on Biden in states such as Texas and Florida while propelling him to victory in key battlegrounds such as Arizona and Georgia in 2020.

And while Biden’s approval numbers might not correlate directly to support for Democratic or Republican candidates in November, Democratic voters low on the president could be less likely to show up at the polls.

“If Latinos are disapproving of the president’s performance, how might that translate into the congressional elections in November? That could translate in two ways. It could translate into Latinos choosing to support a non-Democratic candidate — whether that’s a Republican or an independent remains to be seen in the different congressional districts,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, director of race and ethnicity research at Pew Research Center... READ MORE

In the wake of the Board of Trustees' recent ouster of former Chancellor Joe Castro, more and more of the dirty laundry of other officials within the CSU system keeps coming out. California State University paid $600,000 this year to settle a claim with a Sonoma State provost who reported retaliation and sexual harassment allegations involving the campus president and her husband, according to records in the case obtained by The Times.

Lisa Vollendorf, then the university’s provost, reported to Cal State system officials that several women alleged they were sexually harassed by Patrick McCallum, a prominent higher education lobbyist who is married to Sonoma State University President Judy Sakaki, a legal claim filed with Cal State shows. 

Though not a CSU employee, McCallum is an official university volunteer who participates in campus events with his wife. Vollendorf is a longtime higher-education administrator and was recently appointed as president of SUNY Empire State Collegein New York... READ MORE

A newly drawn House district offered the prospect of electing Oregon’s first Latina to Congress. Then a top super PAC unexpectedly swooped in.

Andrea Salinas has endorsements from top Latino groups and from half of the Latina Democratic lawmakers in the House. She also has backing from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ campaign arm in her bid to become Oregon’s first elected Latina in Congress.

Yet House Majority PAC — which is closely aligned with Speaker Nancy Pelosi — delivered an unexpected blow last week to Salinas’ campaign. In a newly drawn district that’s more than 20 percent Latino, the House Democrats’ flagship super PAC chose to intervene in the primary and plow $1 million into television ads on behalf of a white, first-time candidate.

That decision has sparked an outpouring of criticism and left Democratic strategists and Latino leaders fuming over what they say is an unnecessary mess. It’s evidence, they say, of the party’s failure to invest the resources necessary to excite and court Latinos — or to take seriously the recent erosion of support among those... READ MORE

For Democrats who want to stop the right-wing assault on democracy, statehood for Puerto Rico can seem like a simple fix — one so enticing it may be easy to forget the will of the Puerto Rican people.

As a Boricua journalist who covers the insurrectionist right and comes from a pro-statehood family, I’d love to see Puerto Rico become a state. But Puerto Rico’s fate is not for any person stateside to dictate.

Congress is considering two bills that aim to change Puerto Rico’s status as a commonwealth, which has enabled decades of economic predation and devastation compounded by COVID and natural disasters. Recent island-wide blackouts are just the latest example of neglect. The bills are the Puerto Rico Statehood Admission Actand the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act. Only the latter, co-sponsored by New York Reps. Nydia Velázquez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is truly democratic.

The self-determination bill would create a “status convention” consisting of delegates elected by Puerto Ricans. The delegates would debate and define the implications of various status options — such as statehood, independence and free association (where a sovereign Puerto Rico would retain U.S. economic assistance and transfer agreed-upon authorities to the U.S., such as military defense) — in consultation with a congressiona... READ MORE

MEXICO CITY — Rosario Ibarra, whose long struggle to learn the fate of her disappeared son helped develop Mexico’s human rights movement and led her to become the country’s first female presidential candidate, has died at 95.

The National Human Rights Commission, now headed by her daughter Rosario Piedra, announced Ibarra’s death on its Twitter account, calling her a “pioneer in the defense of human rights, peace and democracy in Mexico.”

She died Saturday in the northern city of Monterrey following several years of failing health.

Ibarra’s son Jesus Piedra belonged to an armed communist group and disappeared, apparently at the hands of authorities, after being accused of killing a police officer.

Ibarra founded the Eureka Committee, a movement demanding information about the fate of her son and other disappeared persons, though his case was never fully clarified.

She was the first woman to appear on a Mexican presidential ballot in 1982, though she won relatively few votes for the Revolutionary Party of the Workers. She was twice a federal deputy and once a senator... READ MORE

The Inland Empire has lost an important scholar and activist. Armando Navarro, a retired UC Riverside ethnic studies professor, passed away from a heart attack on March 25, 2022. He was 80.

Navarro, professor emeritus in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UCR, was a trained political scientist — he obtained a Ph.D. in political science from UCR in 1974. He became the first full-time Chicano Studies faculty member in the Department of Ethnic Studies when he began teaching at UCR in 1992; he retired in 2015.

Navarro was an organic intellectual — a person with natural ties to a social group, who articulates the interests of this group, and gives it self-awareness. He used his gift for analysis and position as a professor for educating, leading, and organizing Latinos in the Inland Empire and beyond.

Navarro played a critical role on campus and in the community. During his academic career, he published seven books and completed an eighth one before his death. His early works looked at the origins, growth, and eventual collapse of Chicano Movement organizations such as the Mexican American Youth Organization and the Raza Unida Party... READ MORE

Before influenza cases ravaged through Orange County in the fall of 1918, a battle brewed at the Santa Ana Board of Education over Mexican students. 

Trustees reneged on their promise to build a Mexican school in time for the new academic year. Meanwhile, the number of Mexican students at Lincoln School had grown by more than 100, an untenable situation for segregationists there who led the charge.

According to Board of Education minutes, the board looked at possible Mexican school sites as early as July and moved to purchase two lots but ultimately found construction too costly.

Supt. J.A. Cranston considered moving two Mexican classes into a Lincoln Elementary “shack” previously used as a changing room for student athletes. The temporary compromise also included separate recess periods so the playground wouldn’t be integrated.

Lincoln’s PTA pushed back. Its president decried that past segregation of Mexican students at Washington School in 1913 had ended and presented a resolution before an Aug. 9, 1918 school board meeting... READ MORE

For years, public health experts have observed how Latinos have overall bettermortality rates than white residents, despite being more likely to have lower incomes, chronic health issues and decreased access to healthcare. 

Now, the historic COVID-19 pandemic has upended the so-called Latino paradox in Los Angeles County.

Latinos also suffered the highest percentage increase in death rates for all reasons among the four racial and ethnic groups analyzed by L.A. County between 2019 and 2021. The mortality rate for Latino residents in L.A. County rose by 48% over that period, growing from a rate of 511 deaths for every 100,000 Latino residents to a rate of 756.

The increase in Latinos’ death rate was double the increase in the death rate for all L.A. County residents, which rose by 23%... READ MORE

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