In 1930, a group of Mexican Americans filed one of the earliest known court cases in Texas against educational racial segregation, Salvatierra et al. v. Del Rio ISD. The case originated in the small west Texas border town of Del Rio. In Salvatierra, Mexican Americans sued the White-controlled Del Rio Independent School District (DRISD) over the segregation of Mexican American children based on race and national origin. Although unsuccessful, the case would become a precedent for future legal assaults against racial segregation led by the Mexican American community well into the 1970s, and one of the most well-known legal cases in Mexican American educational history. Despite the historical significance of the case, much less is known about the leadup to and fallout from this educational activism—and, more importantly, that an independent school system organized and led by Mexican Americans in Del Rio emerged in 1929 and coincided with the Salvatierra litigation. Enter the groundbreaking work of historian Dr. Jesús Jesse Esparza in Raza Schools: The Fight for Latino Educational Autonomy in a West Texas Borderlands Town.
In Raza Schools, Dr. Esparza provides a rich historical analysis of Mexican American educational autonomy in the Texas borderlands. The book chronicles the history of the San Felipe Independent School District (SFISD) in Del Rio, from its inception in the late 1920s to 1971 and that year’s court-ordered district consolidation ruling. As Esparza argues, “SFISD [was] arguably the first and possibly the only completely Mexican American-controlled school district in the history of Texas” (p. 6). Grounded in deep archival research, personal collections, and rich oral history interviews of student alumni and residents of Del Rio and SFISD, Esparza presents a multilayered historical account of Mexican American educational activism in Texas. The work builds on the pioneering work of historians such as Philis M. Barragán Goetz, James B. Barrera, Cynthia E. Orozco, and Guadalupe San Miguel Jr., as well as other studies of Texas illuminating the ways in which Mexican Americans have always fought to maintain autonomy in the face of racism and cultural discrimination. More importantly, as an educational history, Raza Schools illuminates the distinctive role public education played in the philosophy of Mexican American self-determination and freedom. As Esparza argues in his book, Mexican Americans viewed schools as their “precious institution[s],” ideal for enacting political autonomy in the Jim Crow Deep South, and they deeply lamented the collapse of SFISD during the desegregation era.
The introduction and chapters 1-3 document the long establishment of SFISD from the late nineteenth century to the 1950s as a response to the Del Rio public school system’s discrimination of Mexican American students. A key rationale for the creation of the school district in 1929 was to counter a Texas public school system that outright silenced Mexican American agency. The general educational system that most Mexican Americans faced in Texas was one of neglect and racial segregation. In other words, Texas schooling was not about autonomy or cultural preservation but about maintaining Mexican Americans in their proper place in the racial and labor hierarchy. The Mexican American community—as fully detailed by Esparza—pushed against this resoundingly. This portion of the book illuminates the ways in which the Mexican American community in Del Rio did not just create and sustain its own school district but enacted community control. The school district served as the bedrock of this community. Esparza documents how its educational institutions, which included its own high school, became community-serving centers in the truest sense, allowing Mexican Americans to create their own cultural spaces and enact political autonomy. For them, there was no disconnect between schools and community in SFISD. Esparza writes, “The schools became the center of San Felipe more than any other institution did” (p. 81).
Chapter 4, covering the experience of African American students in SFISD and Del Rio, is at once a standout chapter and the least developed of the book. It adds to the growing literature on Blackness in the US-Mexico borderlands and narratives on African American and Mexican American education, building off the work by such scholars such as Cecilia Márquez and ArCasia D. James-Gallaway. The chapter focuses mostly on the experience of African American students in SFISD’s Langston Elementary, a Black school that was segregated until its closure in late 1950s. Overall, the chapter seems out of place because the discussion of African Americans is sparse elsewhere in the book. Thus, it brings up more questions than answers, such as, how exactly did African Americans and Mexican Americans see each other in SFISD and Del Rio at large? What did it mean for Black students to celebrate Armistice Day, Mexican Independence Day, and Juneteenth in their segregated school (p. 88)? What exactly did “educational autonomy” mean for Mexican Americans if that autonomy still maintained Jim Crow schools for African Americans? None of these are addressed fully in the chapter. To be fair to Esparza, this was not one of the main stated goals of Raza Schools; nonetheless, the educational experiences of African Americans in SFISD, Del Rio, and Texas borderlands beg for further analysis and discussion.
Chapters 5-6 detail the slow dismantling of SFISD and changing notions of Mexican American educational autonomy from the 1950s to the 1970s. This change occurred with the emergence of the Chicano Movement in Texas, the passage of state and federal civil rights legislation, and, most of all, the federal desegregation ruling in United States v. State of Texas in 1970. By forcing consolidation with the White-majority Del Rio School District, the ruling effectively ended the Mexican American-controlled school district of San Felipe. A key intervention of Dr. Esparza’s work is his illustration of the ways in which desegregation orders and civil rights legislation affected Mexican American educational autonomy. A major unintended consequence of educational integration was the end of SFISD, and the end of an educational autonomy created in the Jim Crow era, against all odds. In many ways, this mirrors the impact of desegregation on the African American community, especially the national Black teaching force, during the same era. However, as Esparza shows in detail in chapter 6, the commitment to autonomy and Mexican American activism that created SFISD did not end with consolidation. Instead, it morphed and took new forms, including with the creation of district-wide curriculum and new educational programs ensuring that Mexican Americans had an educational space affirming their community. In other words, the long tradition of Mexican American educational activism in Texas persisted and expanded in new areas.
The conclusion to Raza Schools echoes the groundbreaking work of historians Vanessa Siddle Walker and Jarvis R. Givens on fugitive educational spaces. Esparza illuminates how spaces of belonging, community control, and affirmation are central in schooling success. What is more, Raza Schools illuminates the long historical tradition of Mexican American activism and community control usually only discussed with the emergence of the Chicano movement in the 1960s and 1970s. In this sense, the creation and maintenance of SFISD serves as an apogee to Mexican American activism not just in Texas but nationally. Esparza argues aptly at the close of the book that his study “provides a new lens for exploring Mexican and Mexican American civil rights activism in the United States” (p. 172).
Dr. Jesús Jesse Esparza’s Raza Schools is a welcome addition to the growing scholarship in Mexican American educational history, illuminating the ways schools were used to imagine and enact new approaches to activism, citizenship, and cultural affirmation. It serves as another historical blow to any misguided belief that Mexican Americans did not hold education and schooling in the highest regard. In fact, as Esparza soundly demonstrates, Mexican Americans venerated schools, viewing them as the cornerstone of community life and a symbol of hope. This book is inspiring and necessary reading for anyone interested in educational history, ethnic studies, Latina/o/x studies, and Texas history.
