In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, Los Abogados, Arizona’s Hispanic Bar Association, held a forum to admire the contributions of Hispanics and their struggles throughout history.
The forum, held at the Walter Cronkite School’s First Amendment Forum Thursday night, featured three panelists discussing the issues facing Hispanics.
The panelists included Tony Paniagua, who works for Arizona Public Media, Christine Marin, one of the founders of ASU’s reputable Chicana/Chicano Studies Department, and Robert McWhirter, training director of the Pima County Public Defender’s Office.
McWhirter cited the Declaration of Independence before he asked, “Well, how do you count ‘people?’”
The panel discussed Hispanic rights within the court system.
“The practice of law helps people who wouldn’t normally be helped,” said Felicia Melton, a Phoenix School of Law student. “The civil rights movement was basically won by attorneys. They help people.”
The first school segregation case in Arizona was in 1925, the panel said. Children were segregated in schools, and experienced teachers taught the white children, while the Mexican children were educated by student-teachers.
The parents of the Mexican children understood that their children were not being taught equally.
“When we speak of school, an issue relating to segregation and civil rights, civil rights simply doesn’t mean the 1960s civil rights era,” Marin said. “The law came into play in 1925.”
Hispanics bring language, religion, culture and identity to the struggle of equal protection and that is the “backbone of the Hispanic contribution to the equal protection laws,” McWhirter said.
The classification person in different races was also discussed.
“When you go to school you learn about race,” Marin said. “You don’t think about it when you’re learning about it, but they don’t make the distinction of the tone of white.”
When Arizona was evolving, there was a demand for workers in the mining and agriculture industries — and the majority of the workers were Hispanic, Marin added.
“The employers turned their heads when laws started to be enacted,” Marin said. “There was a great industrial movement in our state for workers to be in the fields. But there was a clash occurring between politicians wanting to act on laws to keep workers from wages groups in these industries.”
The issue comes down to what race means to people.
“Someone who is Mexican — is that someone who is born in Mexico?” McWhirter said. “It means different things to different people.”
Contact the reporter at lzimmel@asu.edu
