Introduction
This unit for high school students of beginning through intermediate Spanish will explore the experiences of disenfranchisement and deportation, communal violence, and segregation as endured by Mexican Americans in the twentieth century to 1954. A major purpose of the unit will be to assert the importance of studying the Spanish language and the lives of Spanish speakers in the American context as integral parts of the American experience. The conclusion of our unit will be the story of Beatrice Longoria, widow of fallen soldier Pvt. Felix Longoria, and her struggle to bury her husband after the sole funeral home in her hometown of Three Rives, Texas refused to open its facilities to Mexicans. Dr. Hector Garcia, a Texas Mexican physician and activist mobilized support through a Mexican American veteran's group, the American G.I. Forum. The American G.I. Forum went on to play a significant role as a civil rights organization, taking part in major court cases that paved the way for Brown v. Board of Education.
We will look primarily at the Mexican American experience beginning with the Plan de San Diego and the Texas Border War, 1915-1919. We'll examine forced population movement through the Mexican American deportations of the 1929-1939. Students will learn about Mendez v. Westminster, the 1946 case that outlawed school segregation for Mexican American children in the Ninth Circuit, in the context of the series of cases that led up to Brown v. Board of Education. Finally, we will learn how Pvt. Felix Longoria came to be interred at Arlington National Cemetery. Linguistically, we will identify key features of Mexican and Mexican American Spanish.
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