Advocating For Education
Victor Mendoza . . . cont.
I remember one time there was an issue at Lexington School in Providence -- it used to be on Lexington Avenue, one corner before you get to Broad Street… one day suddenly in 1974, the principal of the school said that they had to send three or four Hispanic kids to be checked at the hospital because he felt that the kids were having trouble mentally. And you know what the problem was? That they couldn't speak English. They could not understand the language. And I felt they were made to feel like fools in the class! It was then that we started to fight for bilingual education, that was a beginning.
So a group of us got together and we went to talk to the superintendent of the schools at that time. And to have the superintendent to listen to us, that was a big thing. This was a very small group for him to pay attention to. We felt it was a big problem because the children were being mistreated, discriminated because of language barrier. Today, you know, the community has grown tremendously and things have changed, yet at the same time, there are a lot of things yet to be done.
You see, when you think about who are and what is a "Hispanic" you think about it only as a word or of a particular neighborhood [South Providence]. You’re not thinking about the people who may not live in that particular neighborhood, those who have established themselves outside of the south side of Providence. But, I tell you, those who do live [in that neighborhood] are people who worked hard to be there: they run their house, they live there. The early years [the 1970s] were a period where the majority -- mainly those who are not Hispanic -- thought that these [Hispanics] were only people who were into drugs, and this and that. In reality the majority of the people there were very decent people... they lived very well and worked hard. So part of what I and a group of community activists did was to remind others that not everybody who lived in the South Providence neighborhood was poor or needy. Then and today, there are many professionals living there too.
So a group of us got together and we went to talk to the superintendent of the schools at that time. And to have the superintendent to listen to us, that was a big thing. This was a very small group for him to pay attention to. We felt it was a big problem because the children were being mistreated, discriminated because of language barrier. Today, you know, the community has grown tremendously and things have changed, yet at the same time, there are a lot of things yet to be done.
You see, when you think about who are and what is a "Hispanic" you think about it only as a word or of a particular neighborhood [South Providence]. You’re not thinking about the people who may not live in that particular neighborhood, those who have established themselves outside of the south side of Providence. But, I tell you, those who do live [in that neighborhood] are people who worked hard to be there: they run their house, they live there. The early years [the 1970s] were a period where the majority -- mainly those who are not Hispanic -- thought that these [Hispanics] were only people who were into drugs, and this and that. In reality the majority of the people there were very decent people... they lived very well and worked hard. So part of what I and a group of community activists did was to remind others that not everybody who lived in the South Providence neighborhood was poor or needy. Then and today, there are many professionals living there too.
The best thing that I did, my best performance is when we founded the Coalition of Hispanic organizations because that was the agency that gave respect to the community. That was the agency that put the name Hispanic high in the state.
Victor Mendoza
Well the best thing that I was part of is when [a group of us] founded the Coalition of Hispanic Organizations (CHO) because in the 1970s that became the agency that gave respect to the community. That was first the agency that put the word "Hispanic" high in the state. That was the agency that fought the police against brutality. That was the agency that confronted the mayor with all of the issues that were affecting the community at that time. And that was the agency that fought the hospital .... that we didn’t have any bilingual workers, that we didn’t have any interpreters in the hospital. And that was the agency that fought the school department to have some representation of Hispanic teachers in the system that could serve as role models for the students. I mean, I could tell you so many things that we did then that really affected change.
To make sure that change was made permanently, we felt it was so important to put somebody "inside the system" to take care what we felt were "the problems" and to put pressure on policy makers. Our job was also to ensure that people were not only hired, but that they would continue to be there to be the eyes and voice for Hispanics.
This was what we believed and fought for so that [Hispanics] would continue to have some kind of representation in areas where they had none in the past.
Political Empowerment
