The Default of Leadership

The Default of Leadership

Mexican American activism

This source is a transcription of a speech given at the end of the Southwest Council on the Education of Spanish Speaking People by George I. Sanchez, the president of the council. This council was held to discuss ways to attack ethnic discrimination in education and labor in the American South. George I. Sanchez was president of this council, and in this source, he provides his insight on how productive the council was in addressing discrimination.

George I. Sanchez

Dolph Briscoe Center for American History

January 23-25, 1950

Open for research and limited publication use

Sanchez, George I. “The Default of Leadership” (1950), Box 3W106, Folder 2,
Good Neighbor Commission Records, 1949-1950. Briscoe Center for
American History, University of Texas at Austin.

Manuscript

English

20th Century Activism Against Discrimination Towards Spanish Speaking People in America

-- will have corrected. Skeletons have rattled in our closets, and we have feared to pull them out into the light of day and thereby lay their ghosts. Vital issues -- shocking health conditions, ignorance, abysmal poverty, wholesale peonage -- have been ignored or covered up; locked up, like the idiot child, in our gloomiest attic so that the neighbors may not doubt our respsectability. I think that it is high time that we began to call a spade a spade, and act accordingly. The two and one half million Spanish-speaking people of this region constitute the least known, the least sponsored, and the least vocal large minority group in the nation. In effect, these people are an orphan group -- unorganized, incoherent, and without a semblance of a friend in court. Even those professionally interested in their problems are without organization, without means of communication, and without that status in their own professions which would enable them to exercise the leadership that is within their competence. It was with the hope that some of these lacks might be met that I have promoted the formation of this Southwest Council on Education. Just getting together every twelve months or so has helped. The exchange of ideas, the good fellowship, and the reciprocal moral support that we have gotten out of our sessions have alone more than justified the time, energy, and money spent in making these meetings possible. I am convinced that nothing must be left undone to make such conferences a permanent institution, and I want it understood that I am placing in your hands the task of finding ways and means of doing that job. But more is needed than conferences and other professional avenues of communication. We need effective professional leadership – leadership that expresses itself beyond the halls of learning and beyond the narrow limits of academic specialties. We need a new conception on the part of public institutions and of public figures of their social responsibilities – and of the fact that the Spanish-speaking people loom large in those responsibilities. These people and their problems are not new. They have been with us in the Southwest for a long time. Their problems are really old, very much neglected, ones. They do not call for miracles, either, for they are usually of such a nature that they do not demand more than just clear thinking, and honest effort, and the expression in action of the most rudimentary sort of Christian morality and common decency. In the main, though they are certainly not homogenous, Spanish-speaking people are close to a folk culture; they are isolated; they speak an untutored Spanish; and, to greater or lesser degree, they follow outmoded norms. They tend to be economically backward, lacking preparation in technology and in modern business methods. But these manifestations of cultural variation are not insurmountable. Education, guidance – a patient, intelligent, planned attack could, in the 100 years at our disposal, have given these people a thoroughgoing apprenticeship. Failure to attack these --

-- and conscientious tutelage of their English-speaking brothers. It would be most unfair and incorrect to say that some of that promise has not been realized. All of us are aware that much has been done to make Spanish-speaking people beneficiaries of the good things of life in the American scene. It is with what could have been done – with what has been left undone in this respect – that I am concerned at this moment. What the exploitation of local resources geared to the status and the requirements of this region? Look at the mass peonage here and the answer is made patent. Many industries of the Southwest, particularly agriculture, are based on a modern version of mediaeval serfdom. To avoid meeting the requirements of a decent standard of living, our commercial farmers – aided and abetted by political leadership at the highest levels – have repeatedly consigned the local population to perdition and have recruited Mexican aliens as cheap, submissive labor. When they can’t get that alien labor legally, they get it illegally. Every year – last year, this year – there are hundreds of thousands of Wetbacks working in the cotton fields, in the citrus groves, on the railroad tracks, on sheep and cattle ranches. They work for a pittance, under deplorable conditions – and they pull down the local Spanish-speaking population to their own miserable level. These local people become displaced persons – migrating from slum areas to the fields and on to other slum areas and other fields: miserable folk, ignorant, sick, abandoned. No, our English-speaking leaders are not without blame. They have prized a bale of cotton above human decency, a carload of grapefruit above the health and enlightenment of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children. I am not going to set forth the failures in other areas – though I could describe to you situations in other fields that reveal the same kind of neglect that I have mentioned for agriculture. Let me simply enumerate some of the ares that, like agriculture, reflect no credit on our leaders: 1. Public Health. 2. Housing. 3. The whole field of civic liberties. 4. Social incorporation. 5. The Church. 6. Education. A few words about education – for we must not hesitate to pour ashes on our own hands. Maybe, after due penance, we may be impelled to a fresh start, with renewed vigor, and a clearer insight as to the goals and responsibilities that are those of our profession as regards the Spanish-speaking population. First of all, I recognize that we have many excuses for some of our major failures. Some of those excuses have the ring of extenuating circumstances, some are clearly nonsense. We can all agree with what Benito Juarez once said:

It is any wonder that there still exists a great gulf between large sectors of the Spanish-speaking population and the rest of society? In view of the default of educational leadership, it would be remarkable if that gulf did not exist. I could spend a lot of time outlining remedies. But the maladies suggest the cures: if people are hungry, let us go out and see that they eat; if they are sick, let us strive to make them well; if they are ignorand and benighted, let us take enlightenment to them. Some will say: “But that is expensive.” True – but misery is not cheap. Others will say: “But we don’t know how.” That I will not believe, for I have the utmost confidence in our ability to conquer these issues – we have conquered much more difficult ones, once we set our minds to it. Some will ask: “Will the public go with us?” Here again, I have the utmost confidence that the American people are honest, freedom-loving, decent people – and we have but to convince them of the justice of the reforms needed and they will be one with us. As you can see, I am highly critical of the past – but I look to the future with optimism and high hope, True we have a large job to do. All right, let’s get at it. Let us stop spinning our wheels in the sands of the ordinary. Let us get on solid ground, with clear direction, and guide the education of Spanish-speaking people in such a way that they will quickly share their full measure of the American Way of Life.

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