Why Latinos and Spanish remain political issue

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

To halt Latino children from speaking Spanish in school, teachers and principals throughout the Southwest physically punished them for using Spanish.

In Los Angeles as late as 1968, high school students were paddled for blurting out Spanish phrases. Bobby Lee Verdugo, 67, remembers being paddled often in front of classmates for speaking Spanish.

“He tried to make a joke about it when it happened,” said Yoli Rios, 67, a classmate who later became his wife. “But I know it was painful.”

The treatment prompted Verdugo to join the 1968 Los Angeles walkouts that forced the schools to end punishment for speaking Spanish and later introduced bilingual education classes. Students also staged walkouts in Houston.

Irene Vasquez, chair of Chicana and Chicano Studies Department at the University of New Mexico, says that activism gave rise to the “English-only” movement in several states.

Some American history...