Date: 1994-03-21
Speaker: DR LA GARZA (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Chairman. I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman. I rise against the amendment. but first let me add a little bit of history that may not be known to most of us here. Where I live in Texas. my hometown of Mission. TX. the first nonoriginal language spoken there was Spanish. when the Spaniards first came. Later they wove in with what is now Mexico. but the language still remained Spanish. Later they came from the northeast. other white Europeans. but not Spanish speaking. to that area of Texas. When I was in the State legislature. there was a gentleman named Felix Tijerina from Houston. who had grown up near Houston. and the problem there then was every household was Spanish speaking. Therefore when a child went to the first grade. he failed. except for a very bright one. The second grade. he failed. The third grade he failed. because there was no involvement at all from the Spanish community. All of the teachers were Englishspeaking teachers. Felix Tijerina then moved as a young child tp Houston. working in a restaurant washing dishes. Eventually he moved into an assistant cook position. He eventually became the cook. Eventually he became the manager. Eventually he bought the restaurant. which is the American dream. But he had not yet mastered English. He had only a third grade education. But he had a heart as big as this Chamber. and he did not want the youngsters to go through in his day and age what he had gone through. So he went and inquired. what is the problem? They do not know enough basic words of English to successfully finish the first grade. Therefore. with his own funds. he went and got one of his teachers. and they looked about how to remedy this. The State would not touch it. Therefore. this teacher told him that you needed 400 basic words of English not to remain in the first grade beyond the 1 year. So he funded several seniors from the high school in the summer prior to the first grade for the children in that neighborhood where he had grown up. and paid them a stipend to teach the children the basic 400 words of English. That little school was then called the Little School of the Four Hundred. It was sponsored by the League of United Latin American Citizens and Felix Tigerina through their own resources. Eventually it caught the eye of then Governor Price Daniels. and three Members of the Legislature. Malcolm McGregor of El Paso. Oscar Laurel of Laredo. and myself sponsored what we called the preschool English legislation. And it passed the House. and it passed the Senate. It was signed by Governor Daniels at the time. This is what we are arguing here basically in ignorance. Why did we get there? Why did it happen? The only thing that we can do now is to fund what the courts ordered. During elections you hear about unfunded mandates. That was the problem. Eventually. it became such a problem that the Federal courts moved into it. And then we legislated. I was here. The problem became what we are now suffering. that Is. it became a Spanish issue in the areas where Spanish was spoken. little knowing that it was French in another area and German in another area and Polish in another area and Slovak in another area. But now we are bashing someone who looks Oriental or if they look like me. Someone recently said. "We need more Europeansounding names around here." Is DE LA GARZA a Europeanenough name for my colleagues? Or does it have to be Winthrop or Walsh? That is what the argument is all about. It is not about the funding. It is that we are down on anyone that does not look American. whatever the heck that is. I guess it is one that looks like you. And this is the area that we are legislating mostly in ignorance. with some degree of emotion of a negative kind. I urge my colleagues not to discuss this type of amendment. We need to educate our children. We need to stop crime in the streets. We need to get more housing. We need to build more roads. We should not be wasting our time on if someone is speaking English or Spanish. does he look Oriental or does he look Hispanic.