By Felipe de Ortego y Gasca
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Editor’s Note: “Somos en escrito” is all about writing: the act of writing, the writing itself and the creator of the words. The essayist is eminently qualified to write about writing and with this essay opens a dialogue with our readers. Ask questions, comment, or submit your own thoughts on paper, as we attempt to learn more about literature and thus attract more Chicanos and Latinos to take up the art.
This is an introductory column encouraged by Armando Rendón in which I advance my bona fides for a monthly column on literary matters for Somos en escrito: the Online Latino Literary Magazine.
It occurs to me that most of my life has been suffused with books—all kinds of books: small books, large books and in-between books. My first books were those little blue books purveyed by Agustin Ayala, the Mexican peddler who brought not only those little blue books to our house but chocolate as well as other Mexican goodies. My mother and father were fond of including the ubiquitous Mexican spices whose fragrances were ever-present throughout our house. Catching the whiff of those spices when I entered the house I knew I was home. That assurance nourished and sustained my joi de vivre. Still does.
My mother and father were a lettered couple—in Spanish. Though they had had limited formal education in Mexico, their intellection betrayed their humble origins, dwelling and agrarian manners drawn from the roots of the Mexican soil they talked about constantly and sang paeans to with nostalgic songs for a passing generation. Canciones de la tierra (songs of the earth) my mother used to call them, oftentimes concealing a lagrima at the corner of her eyes when she heard the refrain of the song que lejos estoy del cielo donde nací (how far I am from the sky where I was born).
I grew up with Mexican songs and Mexican books. By the time I was 10 I had read many books in Spanish, including Dick and Jane in English. In those growing-up years during the Great Depression (1932-1940) in Texas and Chicago I was unaware of the Americanization process American society was putting me through (as a mexicano, that is). My investigative piece on “Montezuma’s Children” (The Center Magazine, November/December 1970) was still 40 years in the future, a work featured as a Cover Story for The Center Magazine and read into The Congressional Record 116, No. 189 (November 25, 1970, S-18961-S19865) by Senator Ralph Yarbrough (D-Texas) who recommended it for a Pulitzer. In 1971 it received a John Maynard Hutchins Citation for Distinguished Journalism.
We were a frijoles and tortilla family. Pushing and scooping the food on my plate with fragments of tortillas in both hands, there was always a book in front of me. I was an inveterate reader. I read the print on cereal boxes, anything. My mother made sure we all had library cards; my father made sure we had tortillas and frijoles. My mother was a natural teacher; she had a teaching style that John Dewey would have approved of. Whatever I read she would ask me to explain to her. Today in these entropic years of mine, I’m saddened that my mother and father did not survive to see the success they were preparing me for as their first-born in the United States.
It was not for lack of intellection that I quit school after completing the 9th grade. It was World War II. I joined the Marines when I turned 17 in 1943, a dark year of the war we were still not sure we would win. That fall I should have been a Senior. Had I been I might have stayed in school to finish.
Unfortunately as a Spanish-speaking mexicanowhen I started First Grade, I was held back to repeat the First Grade because I couldn’t get the hang of the English language. At home we spoke only Spanish. And our English-only-speaking teachers had no training in how to teach the linguistically different student. My work on The Linguistic Imperative in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languageswould not be published until 1970 by the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, D.C.
Unfortunately as a Spanish-speaking mexicanowhen I started First Grade, I was held back to repeat the First Grade because I couldn’t get the hang of the English language. At home we spoke only Spanish. And our English-only-speaking teachers had no training in how to teach the linguistically different student. My work on The Linguistic Imperative in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languageswould not be published until 1970 by the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, D.C.
Humorously I explain that our English-speaking teachers believed in the “Acoustic Theory” of language instruction. They believed that having uttered English words, they would waft through the air in the room and upon reaching the ears of their Spanish-speaking students the English words would be understood by them. Bilingual Education and the Bilingual Education Act I worked (with others) to pass in 1968 with the efforts of Senator Ralph Yarbrough (D-Texas) was still in the future. When I reached the 4th grade and still had trouble with the English language, I was held back once more. The Marine Corps saved me. It never held me back.
By the grace of God I survived World War II as a Marine. And as a World War II veteran on the GI Bill I was accepted without a high school diploma at the University of Pittsburgh in the fall of 1948. Pitt was my intellectual cuna. I pursued an education in Comparative Studies—literature, philosophy and languages (English, Spanish, French, Italian, and Russian). I chose the Master of Arts in English (University of Texas), though I could just as easily have chosen it in Spanish and French. I pursued the Ph.D. in English (British Renaissance Studies) at the University of New Mexico. When I received the Ph.D. in English there, I was the first Mexican-American to receive the doctorate in that discipline at the University of New Mexico.
Since 1952 when the New World Society of Pittsburgh published The Wide Well of Hours, a chapbook of my poetry in English, I’ve written fairly consistently. My second chapbook of poetry (in Spanish) was published in 1964 by the Paso Del Norte Press in El Paso, Texas. Other works followed, like The Stamp of One Defect: A Study of Hamlet, Backgrounds of Mexican American Literature (first study in the field), We Are Chicanos first critical anthology of Mexican American literature published by Washington Square Press, Chicanos and Social Work Education (with Marta Sotomayor), Chicanos and American Education (with Marta Sotomayor), and many more as well as hundreds of critical essays and articles on public affairs. My essay on “The Chicano Renaissance” (Journal of Social Casework, Maya 1971) has become a landmark work in Chicano literature.
With Dan Valdes, in 1972 I signed on as Founding Associate Publisher of La Luz Magazine, first national Hispanic public affairs magazine in English published monthly in Denver, Colorado. Statistics at the time indicated that the preponderance of American Hispanics sought their news in English. There were plenty of magazines for American Hispanics published in Spanish. La Luz was plowing new ground.
Because of the status of print technology in 1972, Dan Valdes sustained the magazine out of his own funds and what revenue we raised in advertising. At its peak, La Luz Magazine reached 500, 000 readers. When Dan died in 1982, I sold my shares of the magazine to other stockholders. During my time with La Luz, I wrote a monthly column entitled “Mano a Mano” as well as editorials in almost every issue. Many Chicano writers had their first works published in La Luz.The principal difficulty in keeping La Luz afloat in those first years was convincing advertisers that the Hispanic market could be reached effectively in English. In this regard, La Luz Magazine was ahead of its time.
In 1983, while working in Washington, D.C., principally in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (Clayton Yeater), which is part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, I joined a group that organized The National Hispanic Reporter. I was appointed Publisher and Editor-in-Chief. Here again I wrote and published extensively in The National Hispanic Reporter. This too was an effort to reach American Hispanics who sought their news in English. I sold my shares in this enterprise in 1992, returning to my roots in academia.
As with La Luz, The National Hispanic Reporter was ahead of the curve in convincing American advertisers that the way into the American Hispanic market was through English. None of the efforts of La Luz and The National Hispanic Reporter were intended to diminish the importance and significance of Spanish language efforts to reach American Hispanics who sought their news in Spanish.
I’ll close with news that Oxford University Press will include my article on “Spanglish” in Language: A Reader for Writers, December 2013. Many of my critical literary pieces have been published by major national and international journals.
Note: “Spanglish” was first published in Newspaper Tree, April 11, 2008; posted on Hispanic Trending, April 11, 2008. Discussed on National Public Radio’s Way With Words with Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, April 11, 2008, posts 213. Posted on American Mosaic Online: The Latino American Experience, hosted by Ilan Stavans, Greenwood Press, May 23, 2008; posted on ChicanoNews.net, May 29, 2008).
Felipe de Ortego y Gasca, Ph.D., Scholar in Residence, Department of Chicana/o and Hemispheric Studies, Western New Mexico University, was the Founding Director, Chicano Studies, UT El Paso, 1970-72.