Within the context of a history of educational neglect of ethnic Mexicans, which typically consisted of segregation, biased curriculum, few resources, and racial prejudices, Philis M. Barragán Goetz, assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, provides the first book-length history of escuelitas, community schools formed in Mexican and Mexican American communities since before the turn of the twentieth century. These schools were grassroots endeavors that became spaces for ethnic Mexicans to protect their children from oppressive and unequal educational opportunities in schools across Texas. According to Barragán Goetz, they were the first of few educational opportunities afforded to ethnic Mexicans within a state rooted in a White power structure that consistently denied equal educational opportunities for them or that used “segregated and vocational schooling as a tool for preventing upward socioeconomic mobility” (p. 8).
In response to this, as Barragán Goetz informs us, parents, private citizens, and local educators, most of whom were women who had grown frustrated with public schools, assumed the responsibility of providing educational opportunities for their children. And in most places in Texas, the author continues, two types of escuelitas took shape, those established in private homes and those founded and maintained by the entire community. Whatever their type, escuelitas “were a grassroots phenomenon . . . [that] arose from ethnic Mexicans’ attempts to educate their children” (p. 1). Additionally, escuelitas did several things. First, they provided the only form of education available to Mexican school-age children. Second, they shielded students from racial segregation and other types of discrimination in traditionally White schools. And third, because they were exclusively for ethnic Mexicans, they also instilled pride in their history and culture. As Barragán Goetz puts it, escuelitas allowed students to retain their cultural heritage, all the while receiving a rigorous education that would prepare them to endure various forms of oppression.
It was through these educational settings also that ethnic Mexican communities became autonomous and ultimately self-sustaining neighborhoods. Escuelitas, for example, were not under the purview of a school board or county judge, things that Mexicans and Mexican Americans historically distrusted; instead, they were managed by people who might have a “say-so” in the school's curriculum and hiring practices. In fact, the community hired the teachers, most of whom were women from Mexico. Additionally, the people determined the school's curriculum, which was taught in Spanish and which included education on Mexican history and culture—subjects that the author correctly states were banned from instruction in traditional public schools throughout the state.
This work, therefore, is groundbreaking in several respects. First, the author successfully extends the history of the Mexican and Mexican American fight for an equitable educational experience backward before the turn of the twentieth century. In chapter 1, for example, she uncovers the history of escuelitas dating back to 1865, when schooling for ethnic Mexicans in Texas was nonexistent, making community schools the only way to provide an educational experience for their children. Barragán Goetz does something similar regarding Mexican American activism, which she again extends backward to the 1910s and 1920s. It was during this period, she contends, that Texas would see the rise of a potent civil rights movement among Mexican Americans. This is the topic of her second chapter, where she looks at the role of the Idar family and their efforts to improve the socioeconomic positions of Mexican Americans. This extended to improving their treatment in American schools, as the fight for a free and equitable education is a significant tenet of civil rights activism.
Second, this work is groundbreaking for how Barragán Goetz repositions the role of women (female teachers) in forming an autonomous Mexican American community as well as in fighting for civil rights. As the author puts it, this “is a story about empowered and educated women assuming leadership roles in historically patriarchal communities” (p. 3). Unlike in most parts of the state, where ethnic Mexican women found it difficult to land jobs as teachers, in escuelitas, they played a central role and were also vital to the overall uplift of the community (p. 130). Readers need only reference chapter 3 for a wonderfully detailed history of female teachers from Laredo, Texas, who formed their own educational spaces for Mexican and Mexican American school-age children. There, readers can find information on some of the lesser-known female intellectuals who served as pioneering women educators. Barragán Goetz also introduces readers to some of the state's well-known foundational figures in education, such as Emilia Dávila, who taught at Colegio Altamirano, the longest-running escuelita in Texas, and Jovita González, a historian in her own right and one of the expert educators of early Texas (p. 141).
Furthermore, this work is heavily sourced. In addition to a long list of published works, the author also uses rich empirical data from archival records, including oral histories. Her methodology is commendable, especially the use of countless interviews with teachers, parents, and students (Barragán Goetz conducted many of the interviews utilized in this book). It is refreshing to see the author rely on records that were produced, preserved, and promoted by Mexicans and Mexican Americans or records that she helped create. Chapter 4, for example, draws deeply from interviews of teachers and students from the 1930s and 1940s. The priority on interviews, this reviewer feels, helps reposition oral histories as a historical authority. Additionally, the author does well in collecting empirical data from both well-known archival centers and personal collections, thereby also repositioning private records as a historical authority. Her reliance on Spanish-language newspapers, unpublished essays, dissertations, and theses, which provide a wealth of information on local history, merits mentioning as well, as does the use of an excellent map, which shows the documented locations of escuelitas in Texas between 1880 and 1960.
The book is also richly laced with beautiful pictures, from a photo of Hidalgo County Judge Juan Manuel de la Viña, one of few ethnic Mexicans to serve as county superintendent of public instruction in Texas, to pictures of intellectuals like the Idar family: Nicasio Idar and his three children, Jovita, Clemente, and Eduardo, who used their newspapers to call an end to school segregation starting in the early 1900s. The book also includes photos of the intellectual Jovita González as well as a picture of the García family (Clotilde and Hector P. García), who, as children, also attended escuelitas. This is the topic of discussion, in fact, of Barragán Goetz's fifth chapter, in which she looks at the ways these community schools impacted activists of the forties, fifties, and sixties, many of whom attended those types of schools as children and who as adults were affected in one way or another by doing so. And indeed, there are photos of students and teachers of the various escuelitas throughout Texas, such as Colegio Altamirano, located in Hebbronville, Texas, which operated for sixty years. These images not only provide a snapshot of the intellectual accomplishments of ethnic Mexicans in early Texas but also illustrate the intense educational pursuits among those typically believed to be apathetic about education.
Reading, Writing, and Revolution is a must-read for those interested in education history, Mexican American history, borderlands history, and the history of civil rights activism. Moreover, this book serves as a blueprint for those interested in studying local history, as the author provides accounts of small Texas neighborhoods bringing relevance, by extension, to communities too often overlooked. And like Jovita González, who as an educator worked endlessly to teach the correct history of ethnic Mexicans in the United States, Barragán Goetz, has provided an essential piece of work also determined to set the record straight, that is, that Mexicans and Mexican Americans were not apathetic toward education but rather were resolute to furnish one that was free from Anglo segregation and other forms of discrimination.
