May 20,1991 - El Paso Herald-Post

The Big D has North Forty, but also el barrio

The comedic stint by Paul Rodriguez was moving, and the music by Little Joe Hernandez packed a wallop. The theme of the event in Dallas last week was one of registering voters as well as educating the community to stand up and deliver, to take charge of its rights and responsibilities.

Big D is a lovely city to look at. Its buildings have a strong imagery to them, a beauty that expresses our human creativity. Downtown has that big-city sensibility which celebrates modern society as only a metropolitan area can.

There are also those enclaves of poverty, the meanness, of hunger staring one in the face, and the many eyes which have seemingly lost faith in humane goodness and accepted the rapaciousness of exploitation by an upwardly mobile society which mostly pays lip service to ideals.

Yes, it can be a vicious existence for those caught in the grip of bottom-rung impoverishment and inadequate education. It can seem so demeaning that one can lose hope and jadely/cynically mock everything. But life is not just disdain, it is also a struggle toward transforming oneself in order to better one's condition as well as help one's comunity to elevate itself.

The day after listening to Rodriguez and Hernandez I spent hours at UT Arlington doing a reading for the 1991 Chicano Youth Conference organized by the Texas Association of Mexican American College Students, or TAMACS.

It was great to visit with youths who come from the inner barrios, great to note that there is much hope and promise within eyes which have known the devastation of social problems first-hand.

The college students who organized the event did so by fund-raising to bring in speakers. Carolina, Diana, Anne, Andrea and numerous other young women took on the task themselves by going out to local businesses and resource persons, by holding events to raise money

They did not sit back and wait for a miraculous grant, nor did they want to simply be academic about things.

No! They worked long hours, even sacrificed some of their study time to bring local high schoolers from barrio settings. The main disappointment was in an invited speaker not showing up - Jose Angel Gutierrez, a Dallas-based Hispanic leader still respected in some quarters.

The TAMACS members did not fret at all. They simply continued with the show and gave those future grads pointers on how to cope with the rigors of college life, and the high schoolers loved it. The impact made by those women, some of whom are about to graduate from UT Arlington, was visible as cholitos and cholitas spoke about college.

A drive through a West Dallas barrio later was sobering, as there was no North Forty rich, loamy pasture there. No skyscrapers. No manicured lawns nor swimming pools. But there was despair on many faces. The high-school students on the bus going home spoke about a future, and I felt moved by their willingness and drive as I saw them waving goodbye to the bus.

Paul Rodriguez might get a belly rippling-laugh from such conditions but I could only wince as I saw a bit of El Barrio del Diablo in Dallas. I also saw much hope for the future in the way that those college students took time off from their hectic schedules to reach out to younger versions of themselves, trying to make their entrance into college easier.

The pride in those Chicano youths made for a celebration, and it was moving to again realize that within the pain can one find the empowerment to realize one's dreams - if we dare but dream, if we dare but act to live up to our ideals...