Bless Me in the Face of Censorship

February 10, 2012

When Rudolfo Anaya’s first novel, Bless Me Ultima, was published in 1972, the idea of Chicano literature was brand new. Almost no books by Mexican Americans were available to readers. Forty years later, the schools in Arizona have taken steps to, once again, make Chicano literature harder to get. The state passed a law created to dismantle Tucson’s high school Mexican American studies program. After that, about 50 literary and history books, even including a Shakespeare play, were removed from Tucson schools and placed on a so-called “banned books” list. Anaya’s tale of a six-year-old boy growing up in rural New Mexico was among them. Maria Hinojosa sits down with Rudolfo Anaya to talk about his latest novel and the arizona controversy.

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El Pastor Americano

As part of our ongoing REI series, Radio Nature, we take you to Southwest Colorado, where guest worker sheepherders are brought from Latin America to carry out one of the world’s toughest and oldest professions. Bolivian immigrant Eraclio Beltran is one of the nearly 300 Latin American shepherds in Colorado who spend months at a time in complete isolation, surrounded by the natural landscapes of the American West. Latino USA’s Andres Caballero reports from Colorado.

RadioNature is a year-long series that looks at how people of color connect with nature. Funding comes from the REI Foundation. This piece was produced by Andres Caballero and edited by Leda Hartman. Voice over work was done by Rosalino Ramos.

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In Texas, the population has grown by close to four-and-a-half million people in the past decade. Latinos account for 65-percent of that growth. You might expect that the new district maps would reflect that demographic shift, but they don’t. Proposed boundaries were challenged and rejected in court, and that includes the latest mapping presented to the courts on February 6th. Maria discusses the case with Nina Perales, vice president of litigation at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and lead counsel for the Texas Latino Redistricting Task Force.

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