Norma Martinez

This week on Fronteras. 

•   South Texans say the president’s border wall is affecting them before it’s even built.
• San Antonians demonstrate for and against removing a Confederate monument from a downtown park.
• Listening helps foster racial understanding in Austin.
• Truck driver indicted in human smuggling deaths.
• Texas Gulf coast residents sue a large plastics plant saying it’s polluting their water.
• A look at cultural rituals and myths attached to the celestial phenomenon of a solar eclipse.

On Fronteras:  

• The importance of including accurate Mexican-American history in school curriculums.
• An Austin bar shuts down a Latino DJ group for playing Latin music.
• Two North Texas artists are working to beautify the image many people have about life on the Texas/Mexico border.   

In 2010, public schools in Arizona were forbidden from teaching Mexican American studies to their students.  A group of Republican state lawmakers there argued that the classes created resentments towards other races, and even in some cases, promoted the overthrow of the U.S. government.  A U.S. District Court judge is expected to rule on the ban’s constitutionality in the coming days.

Educators in Texas are looking past the Arizona controversy and are working to teach public school students about Hispanics’ often-overlooked role in shaping American history. 

Texas Public Radio’s Norma Martinez sat down with Marco Cervantes, director of the Mexican American Studies Program at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and Lilliana Saldaña, Associate Professor in Bicultural-Bilingual Studies at the UTSA College of Education and Human Development.