Bilingual Education

As teachers, we are advocates for the students. We are NOT blind followers to the status-quo which for too long has been to turn a blind eye to the specific needs of our bilingual population.

The first bilingual program in this country was established in 1839, yet we still can not agree on central goals for our district’s bilingual program. The lack of a central goal is not only obstructing the success of the students, but in the long term hindering the quality of life of the community in which we are serving. In accordance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, non-English dominant students are entitled to special help in public schools. Placing a group of bilingual students in a classroom with a non-bilingual teacher or simply immersing them in the English language is not providing the special help to which they are entitled. The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 provides schools with federal funding for students with limited English speaking proficiency. As a district, we must unite administration, teachers, and parents to provide the proper education for our growing bilingual population.

Bilingual committee goals (involving parents)

1. To develop a bilingual mission statement: I have had parents tell me that they want their English-dominate students in bilingual education so that they can improve their Spanish. This is simply not where the need lies in our district. There needs to be aligned procedures and policies (which work with the LPAC committee) to choose which students should be in the program and to determine the educational goals for those students.

2. To strive for education policies which are aligned with current research: The current “sink or swim” English immersion protocol in our district has shown to be wholly ineffective in multiple research studies. As a district including teachers, parents, and administrations, we need to agree on a research supported streamlined bilingual education program with the success of the student in mind. (i.e. Dual Language, Early Exit Bilingual, Transitional Bilingual, Structured English Immersion)

3. To fight for equal class sizes: It is unfair that bilingual students are consistently in larger classes with larger student counts, when research shows they are a population that requires more frequent intervention, more attention, and more small group work.

4. To develop a fair testing procedure: The class size issue is a result of the top-down desire for students to become quickly stream-lined to the English language for testing purposes. This is inevitably not best for the students, but what is best for the district’s accounts books. Education needs to be student-centered for students to be successful.

Community Gardens Bloom Opportunity

I got out and dug in the dirt this weekend. I weeded and prepared a couple of beds, started cleaning up trash (there is still mounds of up), and cleaned out and old potting shed. I am trying to start up our school garden again, which has been inactive for several years. Just today I have had both parents from the church next door and the school stop by asking when the plots will be available. I share this only to demonstrate that the people in this area are SO eager to do well by their families and their community.
Even though this community is fairly rural, it still technically lies within city lines. Consequently, they have no representation for the specific needs of their region within the legal or political sphere; even though there needs are staggeringly different from those in the metropolitan area of the city. The school is usually the only the channel many of these families have to be heard.
When I speak to parents on the subject of school food, most say they are dissatisfied with the school food, but are also unable to fulfill all the nutritional needs for their family given the lack of access to fresh food, lack of education, and lack of economic means to overcome these obstacles. Considering all these obstacles, most of them do not complain about the free and reduced breakfast and lunch. However, the first question they ask about a community garden is if the produce will be served in the cafeteria. The status quo is low quality, high fats, high preservative, prepackaged, and ships a couple of thousand miles, just the way the food service corporation likes it. There is so much potential for mobilization here.
The food service provider contracted with our school work with two main clients: schools and jails. I am quite sure they will not give up half of their business in schools easily. If we could divert a percentage of the budget from going to a big company for food services and instead directed that money into the community, it would greatly benefit the quality of life of our residents and students. Funding for a small scale project such as this would satisfy the parents, be better for the students, and benefit the entire community. On a larger scale, if there was money to stimulate local businesses (I know there are poultry and egg farms nearby) the benefits would be multiplied indefinitely for community moral, economic opportunity, and a more stable sense of home for many students who feel caught between two worlds.

Summer Reading Reviews

Eduardo Galeano Patas Arriba: La Escuela del Mundo al Revés (1998)

Galeano tells it like it is. I think this book was also published in English: read it. In his unique style Galeano describes a world through the looking glass that hauntingly resembles our own.

Carlos Castaneda Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan (1972)

Castaneda is an anthropologist interested in studying the cultural and spiritual issues surround the use of peyote. He meets Don Juan who teaches him everything he needs to understand before he can begin to study the use of hallucinogenic plants. Don Juan is an unconventional and often cryptic spirit guide for Castaneda’s journey to find his own identity. Provides an interesting paradox between anthropological studies and the subject; even though it is Castaneda who is conducting a study, he appears to be the subject in his relationship with Don Juan.

Noam Chomsky Chomsky on Anarchism (1969)

This is a collection of Chomsky’s writings and interviews pertaining to anarchism. This anthology provides a broad spectrum of definitions for anarchy. Chomsky proposes that it is a way to escape oppression of information control and a manner of organizing society in which each person fulfills his or her full potential. He writes, “Freedom of thought and enlightenment are not only for the elite” (109).

Noam Chomsky Hegemony or Survival: The America’s Quest for Global Dominance (2003)

I almost had this book taken away from me at airport security; read it before it gets censored. This book is a part of The American Empire Project along with several other Chomsky book as well many book by other authors. Chomsky describes the war crimes of the U.S. that have served to maintain the U.S. hegemony of money, power, government, economies, etc. Chomsky introduces his thesis, “There has never in history been anything remotely like the near-monopoly of means of large-scale violence in the hands of one state- all the more reason for subjecting its practices and operative doctrines to extra careful scrutiny” (36).

Paulo Coelho El Peregrino: Diario de un Mago (1987)

I got into a discussion with someone recently who thought Coelho was overly simplistic; however, I think his writing is simply universal. In El Peregrino, Coelho presents autobiographical ideas of identity, meditation, destiny, and journeys through his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

Roald Dahl Going Solo (1986)

I liked Roald Dahl’s children’s books more than his autobiographical text. Dahl tells about his adventures as an Exxon oil employee in Tanzania and his experiences as a fighter pilot in WWII. Imperialistic yet sweet.

Anarchism or Bust

Anarchism or Bust

Anarchy is lawlessness, disorder, and chaos, or so it is portrayed in popular culture. This became abundantly clear to me last night while I was escaping the heat at the movies. At the climax of a mind numbing action thriller, the super evil villain, the Joker, calls himself an anarchist. I immediately turned to my friend, and in a not so quite voice said, “that’s not what anarchism is!?” I was shocked at my own poor movie theatre etiquette and my strong reaction has triggered some reflections.

This seems to be a hot topic word for me this summer. I have recently been submersed in anarchist literature, both locally and internationally published materials. I like what they have to say, they propose more order than the chaotic situations in which we currently find ourselves. likewise, I have found the most kind and accepting people in this city are people I have meet with similar ideas of forming our own system of living. Still, the idea of producing our own food, laws, happiness and a self-authoritarian society in which each persons’ skills are valued and important, seems to be a paradigm that lies just out of the boundaries of everyday thought.

It’s a well known pattern that people fear what they do not understand. Anarchy proposes redistributing power from the few to the many. It is easy to see how the masses could be fed ideas about ‘chaotic potential’ of this ideology and why those in power would like to keep it that way. However, there is hope: my experience with anarchism on the ground here in Austin yields safe environments for all types of people, good company, fair food, and intelligent conversation. Haven’t met any Jokers yet.

Banner of Blood: Reflections on Memorial Day

Banner of Blood:

Reflections on Memorial Day

No mistaking it, it’s a genuine Midwest-American celebration: Memorial Day. A morning parade filled with everything red, white, and blue kicks off the day, while posters with slogans like “freedom isn’t free” and “support our troops” plaster front yards and car windows. The discount plastic patriotic merchandise, flags, paper plates, plastic cups, garden kitsch, are only a dollar and the print on the back reminds us “made in china” Families pack into their SUVs and head to the park with coolers filled with over processed, over packaged, and over hydrogenated foods, anxious to get back to their television sets. Meanwhile, US troops are abroad, and we are blindly supporting their continual violations of human rights, their actions to protect private corporate interests, and their tactics to keep the countries opposed to capitalism intimidated and living in fear. This whole idea of remembering our fallen is a but difficult for me to conceive when the schools hardly seem to acknowledge the immeasurable number of death at the hands of US trained troops and the results of foreign policies.

This lifestyle and these ideas of patriotism, development, and the notion of the US as a world power and promoter of freedom and democracy, are nothing I am capable of being proud of. To be clear, I am not proud to be an American, and no amount of plastic flags lining the entrance of the super market will make me feel any different. I feel like we all missed that essential class called independent thought 101. And I am angry that anyone who questions theses ideals or people who think outside of the dominant discourses, have be persecuted in a witch-hunt they call democracy. This discourse’s chief enforcer is the constant bombardment of ideas about what it means to be American, to be a consumer, to be a man or to be a woman, the list is endless.

Is this freedom? If we do not have intellectual freedom and the spaces for alternative discourses to develop and cultivate naturally in communities, how can we say that the US is a free country? In conclusion, “freedom isn’t free,” but banners of blood are on sale, this Monday only, a 99 cent special.

The Role of Militarization in Building U.S. Hegemony in Latin America

The Role of Militarization in Building U.S. Hegemony in Latin America

In his book, Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo Galeano demonstrates that the U.S. economy and its ability to wage war depend on the consumption of Latin America’s resources. During the 20^th century, the U.S. has been able to control the resources in many Latin American nations. Under the guise of development or security, the U.S. has dispossessed through military intervention, controlling the economy through loan systems, and by establishing U.S. capital interests in the region. The result of this U .S. economic hegemony, often created and reinforced with military aid, has in fact not promoted stability, but rather has created uneven development in the South. Galeano writes, “Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others” (Galeano, 2). In addition to uneven economic development, the effect of militarization to control resources has significant cultural, political, and economic impacts on the nations in which it is employed. The atrocities and lasting effects of state terror are explored in the anthologies When States Kill and Death Squads. Through these sources, it is clear that dispossession either through military or proxy intervention facilitates the hegemonic control of resources and creates legacies of violence and poverty. This essay explores U.S. military intervention as the key apparatus for establishing economic and political control in Latin America.

Galeano tells the history of resource extraction in Latin America, especially after the industrial revolution and during the development of modern capitalism. In this period, U.S. companies extracted resources like iron, tin, nitrate, and oil in many Latin American nations and established economic and political control in the region while quickly exhausting the resources. A good example of economic domination through embargos, taxation, and political manipulation, is the case of the Standard Oil cartel in several nations during the middle of the twentieth century. Standard Oil, or one of its many subsidiaries, had been established in Latin America since the turn of the century. Galeano writes, “The structure of the cartel implies the domination of many counties and the penetration of many governments” (158). Stand Oil was able to extract crude petroleum from Venezuela, México, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia; while they refined the resource elsewhere, quickly turning a big profit without returning any of the benefits to the providers. In 1939, the Mexican government attempted to take control of the black gold and nationalize their oil, but the Stand Oil cartel organized a mass blockade of Mexican petrol (Galeano, 159). Uruguay tried to resist foreign domination by constructing a refinery, but they still had to buy their own raw product from the Stand Oil cartel, eliminating the nation’s profit margin (Galeano, 161). In Venezuela, members of the cartel played key roles in creating tax cuts and evasion of worker rights, insuring over $300 million in additional annual profits (Galeano, 168). It is clear that any resistance by workers, unions, or governments, was met with new mechanisms to maintain economic control. Through this example and in all of Galeano’s work, one can see that as early as the nineteenth century, the western capital structure controlled the resources, the economy, and the government in Latin America.

Galeano demonstrated with the case of Standard Oil that corporations had already well established control in the economic and political sectors of Latin America by the mid twentieth century. However, as further internal resistance grew against foreign intervention, the U.S. turned to military intervention to secure capital investments. The U.S. used, and continues to use, military intervention to ensure capitalism as a world economic system. It seems that the public would widely protest violent military intervention for resources, but the U.S. has found several ways to skirt around this issue. For example, in the post WWII era, one major theme that was used to legitimize military intervention was anticommunism and counterinsurgency tactics. Both of these tactics lacked validity since they only served to maintain control by preventing countries from nationalizing their resources. Furthermore, these interventions have perpetuated violence and kept nations economically dependent on the U.S. Nonetheless, the U.S. has found many opportunities to fund military action to preserve capitalist hegemony.

Galeano notes that most of the military projects in Latin America are in areas rich in resources and previous capital investments (Galeano, 136). Direct military intervention has not only been used to protect specific corporations, but also to protect the larger idea of the free market. One has to ask themselves how free a market can be staring down the barrel of a gun. For example, military action has ensured the power of governments which supported foreign investment. Such is the case of U.S. military involvement in Nicaragua. Chomsky writes, “The region is one of the world’s most awful horror chambers, with widespread starvation, semi-slave labor, torture and massacre by U.S. clients. Virtually every attempt to bring about some constructive change has been met with a new dose of U.S. violence…” (Chomsky, 4-5). During a 1927 occupation of Nicaragua, the U.S. marines established La Guardia, insuring the rule of Somoza and a military state able to crush any opposition (Grossman, 64). During the fifty-two year Somoza dictatorship, La Guardia controlled the country with violence and torture methods they learned in U.S. military training camps. Almost 5,000 La Guardia cadets attended the School of the Americas during these years and in addition the U.S. military had over 164 separate programs for training proxy armies during the Somoza regime (Grossman, 67). La Guardia killed tens of thousands of people and became the elite upper class in Nicaragua, benefiting from U.S. foreign investments and their own clandestine enterprises.

In When States Kill, Grossman writes that eventually anticommunism became the U.S.’s main justification for supporting the violent La Guardia rule. Chomsky writes that the development of the anticommunist and anti-Sandinista sentiments shows the U.S.’s fear of Nicaragua’s potential economic independence (81). The result of the Nicaraguan intervention met several key goals for the U.S.: the threat of communism and nationalized resources was destroyed while U.S. capital investments were secured. Furthermore, the U.S. was later able to call on its proxy Nicaraguan army during occupations of neighboring nations.

As the case in Nicaragua shows, the military apparatus is essential to securing U.S. hegemony in Latin America. The use of proxy armies in military intervention for the control of resources is complicated because the nature of indirect intervention further separates the oppressor and the oppressed. For example, Regan and Carter administration both supported regimes that secured what Chomsky calls the fifth freedom, “the freedom to rob and exploit” (Chomsky, 47). U.S. supported violence has been systematically conducted under the guise of development plans, anticommunist sentiment, and promotion of democracy or the Four Freedoms.

Just as the U.S. trained La Guarida to combat to the supposed evils of communism and then reaped the economic benefits, the U.S. continues to provide a great deal of military assistance to Columbia. The U.S. officially intervened in the civil war in Columbia in 1989 when the Clinton administration designed Plan Columbia to eradicate the problem of illicit crop growing (Dugas, 242). However, it quickly became clear that Plan Columbia increased military funding to an already very complicated and violent situation. The U.S. aid plan financed arms and training for the state military in counterinsurgency tactics to fight guerillas and paramilitary. However, many state military officials are deeply imbedded in the paramilitary regimes (Dugas, 237). The military aid to Columbia keeps the U.S. in a certain position of power over the economic and social conditions of the country, while continually violating human rights. Dugas writes, “These decisions have sent a clear message to Colombian military officers that human rights violations will not stand in the way of receiving U.S. arms and training” (240). Plan Columbia became even more contradictory during the Bush administration. Particularly after 9/11, the goal of Plan Columbia changed to include rhetoric of counterterrorism and is currently focused on protecting the Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline (Dugas, 242-243). This adapted plan continues to ignore human rights and furthermore it protects foreign capital investment. In 2003, the U.S. sent seventy U.S Army Special Forces troops to aid in protecting the pipeline, and continues to train state military in counterterrorist tactics (Dugas, 247). Plan Columbia perpetuates civil unrest, human rights abuses, military conflict, and at the same time it is conveniently protecting one of the biggest oil pipelines in Latin America.

We have discussed in class that the conditions in Latin America are not an absence of development, but rather the product of development. The conditions in Nicaragua, Columbia, and arguably any other Latin America country with a history of U.S. involvement, will continue in states of violence and oppression under the U.S. hegemonic economic model. At the same time, the U.S. has continually drawn at-home support by creating dominant discourses and common fears of communism, terrorism, or equally obscure campaigns. The U.S. economic and military domination has left the South largely mis-developed and reliant on U.S. support. In examining the evidence of the situations in both Nicaragua and Columbia, it is apparent that Galeano’s theory is correct: the U.S. capitalist model’s ability to function is solely based on its ability to control the extraction of resources by any means necessary, in many cases with the use of the military apparatus.

Postscript

The role of the military apparatus in securing the capital interest of the U.S. is described very clearly in these materials. Yet, we can see the same situation clearly in the U.S. involvement in Iraq repeating the sequence. The contradiction that is most striking to me is that while there is published material about this connection, the media and the system that is promoting the “war on terror,” “war on drugs,” and the “spread of American Democracy” seems to overpower the much more logical arguments. History does repeat itself, especially the history of U.S. military intervention for resources.

People slap stickers on their car “to support our troops” and I have wonder if they are choosing to look the other way or if they really believe in the system they supposedly support. Sadly, I think most people really believe in the U.S. foreign relations policy. It makes me ashamed to be a part of a culture that is so easily controlled by the glowing box streaming into most U.S. kitchens and living rooms. The main threat to international security is not a “terrorist” group, but in fact the larger force of military and economic dominance.

The other issue I find highly problematic about the mainstream cultural interpretation of U.S. intervention is the fact that violence on the part of the resistance is portrayed as the root of all evil, as “terrorism,” yet violence at the hand of a U.S. soldier is seen as noble. I don’t agree with either interpretation. War is not noble and I don’t necessarily admire insurgence violence either. One of the popular questions that exemplifies this dichotomy is “did the U.S. deserve the 9/11 attack?” I think it is important to establish the difference between deserving violence and understanding the events that may have lead to said violence. I think the distinction needs to be clear between deserving the attack and there being reasons for it.

This is not a new game, just different players. The U.S. is attacking terrorist in the same way we saw them attack communism in many Latin American nations, nations rich in resources. Our nation has some of the worst geography and history ratings in public schools and it certainly shows in popular thought.

Every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction, and as we have discussed in class, one can understand the oppression in a region by understanding the amount of resistance.
Bibliography

• Dugas, John C. “The Columbian Nightmare: Human Rights Abuses and the Contradictory Effects of the U.S. Foreign Policy.”

• When States Kill. Ed. Cecilia Menjívar and Nestor Rodríguez. University of Texas Press: Austin, 2005.

• Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Monthly Review Press: New York, 1997.

• Grossman, Richard. “The Blood of the People: The Guardia Nacional’s Fifty-year War against the People of Nicaragua.” When States Kill. Ed. Cecilia Menjívar and Nestor Rodríguez. University of Texas Press: Austin, 2005.

• Noam, Chomsky. Turning the Tide: The U.S. and Latin America. Black Rose Books: Montreal,1987.

Civil Unrest between Venezuela, Columbia, and Ecuador

Editorial Rant: Civil Unrest between Venezuela, Columbia, and Ecuador

A couple of days ago, I read a headline that distracted me from my schoolwork, I noticed a ticker come across the screen, declaring the situation between Ecuador, Columbia, and Venezuela is worsening.

I shook my head in frustration. I tried to return to my work, but I became distracted by my thoughts about the roots of this conflict. I began to surf the articles from the last four days on the developing crisis between the three nations. Earlier this week, Raul Reyes, a Columbian rebel leader was assassinated by paramilitary causing a domino effect of finger pointing and militarization of the region. To my disappointment, but not to my surprise, there is no mention of the United States government, funding, or military in the reports. Some readers may finds themselves asking why I find this problematic, I explain below:

The US is in some way connected with these events. Having studied these relationships in university courses, I know that it is possible for blood to be shed in Columbia without staining the hand’s of any US solider. To be more specific, the US may not have troops deployed in any of these nations, but they do contribute a hefty amount of military aid to Columbia. (Columbia is second only to Israel in US military aid). This monetary contribution, supposedly to fight the war on drugs, actually supports a strong paramilitary in the region.

The murder of Raul Reyes and other rebel leaders by paramilitary has caused political, social, and military unrest between Ecuador, Columbia, and Venezuela. All the delegates have been removed from their neighboring positions and battalions and tanks sent to the border. Chaos is quickly developing.

So I ask myself, what is the motivation for the US supporting this paramilitary action abroad that would cause such chaos in countries where they claim to be supporting the development of democratic values? In my opinion, the answer is quite simple. Like other foreign polices, this case is a perfect example of military funding that seeks to secure resources and also play on the fear of the American public. The US has openly opposed Chavez and his policies in the past, and I don’t believe the roots of this conflict are any different. In the last Venezuelan election, Chavez was elected by the democratic majority and the US paramilitary tried to bring him out of power. He has put an embargo on oil going to the US, when Venezuela used to be the 7^th biggest importer of oil to the US. He contradicts everything the neo-liberal politics emphasize; he wants his country's resource to benefit its own people, not a foreign investor. Not only has Chavez allowed his country to take control of its own resources, but there was recently talk of having other neighboring nations join the embargo as well. For this, Chavez’s politics are seen as a threat to the US handling the “free” oil market.

It is difficult to see these countries banning together now, considering the recent developments. It is really unfortunate, especially considering that Chavez attempted to negotiate peace talks between the conflicting militants groups in Columbia. If the nations had been able to join together in an embargo, they would inevitably become more economically independent, no longer requiring the financial crutch of the US military aid.

Considering all this information, I am implying that the military funding for the war on drugs is indeed the central source of the recent conflict between Venezuela, Ecuador, and Columbia. This is of course, my own speculation. However, I do think in democracy we have the responsibility as citizens to constantly question our country's foreign policy, know where our tax dollars go, and question the amount of involvement we have in developing international issues.

The bottom line is that the situations and conflicts are complicated and they become even more complicated with money and pressure streaming in from the US and US corporations. Wake up America: the US in not just at war in Iraq, but in fact funding conflicts to have part in controlling resources abroad.