September 10, 1999
By Raoul Lowery Contreras
Originally published in La Prensa San Diego.
In a million years, the United States of America would have never heard of El Cenizo, Texas, if it hadn't been for the town's city council passing a municipal ordinance that has shaken the consciousness of the country's least desirable observers.
The city council passed an ordinance requiring that city business be conducted in Spanish so all city residents can understand their own government. They also instructed city employees, all six of them, not to cooperate with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in searching for, or apprehending deportable people. They did not order that city business not be conducted in English with English speakers; they did not order that students be taught in Spanish-only in public or private schools. They did not order that Spanish be the only language spoken in the city.
It must be pointed out that El Cenizo is not a sophisticated modern meteropolis. In fact, it is a dingy dusty little town that was settled on terrible land with no amenities, no sewers, running water and electricity. What El Cenizo has become has come at the hands and hard work of the people who live there, almost all who have come from Mexico.
They don't like Anglos telling them what to do and they don't like the INS. They are not the only city in the country to not cooperate with the INS, but one would think so. At the opposite end is Chandler, Arizona where local gendarmes made the mistake of running amok through the streets of the city hassling American citizens and violating the Constitutional rights of hundreds and thousands of people. That's not just my opinion, but the opinion of the Republican Attorney General of Arizona and the INS Inspector General who cops to violations of policy, which, in bureaucratese means, they violated the law.
Is El Cenizo the first case of a foreign language being official in lieu of English in the USA? No. In 1919, the State of Nebraska, among other states, passed laws prohibiting foreign languages (specifically the German language) in schools as a medium for instruction prior to the 8th grade. Of particular interest is that the law said, "Section 1. No person, individually or as a teacher, shall, in any private, denominational, parochial or public school, teach any subject to any person in any language than the English language."
One should notice that the law specified "private" "denominational;" and "parochial", as well as public schools in its prohibition of the use of anything but English in the teaching of any subject. The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled the law Constitutional as an exercise in the State's "police power." Never mind that it shredded the 1st Amendment of the Constitution. Imagine a state passing a law today prohibiting the use of Hebrew in a private Jewish school, or the use of Arabic in a Moslem school, imagine that.
The Supreme Court of the United States disagreed with the Nebraska Court, as well they should have. In Meyer v. State of Nebraska (262 U.S. 390, 1923), the Court decided the issue using these words from the 14th Amendment as the base of their ruling: "No state...shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law."
"While this court has not attempted to define with exactness the liberty thus guaranteed, the term has received much consideration and some of the included things have been definitively stated. Without doubt, it denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."
The Court continued: "That the state may do much, go very far, indeed, in order to improve the quality of its citizens, physically, mentally and morally, is clear; but the individual has certain fundamental rights which must be respected. The protection of the Constitution extends to all, to those who speak other languages as well as to those born with English on the tongue. Perhaps it would be highly advantageous if all had ready understanding of our ordinary speech, but this cannot be coerced by methods which conflict with the Constitution, and cannot be promoted by prohibited means." (Emphasis added)
So, the El Cenizo issue boils down to a simple proposition. Have the town fathers coerced anyone into speaking and writing Spanish? Have they ordered schools to drop English? Have they ordered private institutions to use Spanish-only? Have they unleashed the language police on the poor English-speaking Anglos of Texas? Has the state coerced anyone here in this town? Have the city fathers of El Cenizo ruffled the feathers of those who would coerce people to speak English-only?
What, now, will happen in El Cenizo? Will the storm troopers parachute into the Rio Grande Valley to take El Cenizo back for the United States? Will the lawyers batter El Cenizo with writs and injunctions? I don't think so. El Cenizo has the best protection in the world, the United States Constitution.
(Raoul Contreras can be emailed at: sdraoul@pacbell.net)
Other articles republished from La Prensa San Diego
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