unscriptedepisode4070314tonydiaz.mp3

[Music: The Wild Dogs Of Nauru, The Womb] Tony Díaz:  This is a Chicano renaissance. We’re going to win the court battles, we’re going to win the battles of public opinion, we’re going to win in the artistic side, we’re going to win in the history books, and we are updating the American Dream. Daniel Alarcón: Welcome to Radio Ambulante: Unscripted, a new way to listen to Latin America. Part of SoundWorks from PRI. I'm Daniel Alarcón. If you’ve been paying attention to the immigration debate, you know at least some of what’s been going down in Arizona. You probably heard about HB 1070,  the so-called Show me your papers bill, deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. You probably heard about right-wing darling Sheriff Joe Arpaio, under investigation by the Justice Department. But maybe this slipped under your radar: in the realm of public education, there’s been another fight underway. In May 2010, Arizona House Bill 2281 ended Ethnic Studies, and in the process banned some of the most beloved and important books in the Latino and Latin American canon. Luis Alberto Urrea, Sandra Cisneros, Rudolph Anaya, Dagoberto Gilb, were just a few of the authors whose work was banned.  Writer and activist Tony Díaz was among those who who were outraged about this. He, and his allies, organized a caravan to smuggle banned books back into Arizona. Since then, Tony Díaz, el Librotraficante -- Spanish for “book smuggler” -- has become a one of the leaders of nation-wide movement in favor of Mexican American and Ethnic Studies. I recently spoke to Tony about this movement and about how it all started. But first, I wanted to know more about Tony’s experience growing up in Texas and then in Chicago: Tony Díaz: Actually, my folks were pickers in Texas, but I was lucky enough to come to a new existence after they had moved to Chicago, so that my childhood was very different than my siblings’ because all of them had to pick. They were picking everything from alfalfa, tomatoes throughout Texas, even Michigan, but I grew up on the south side of Chicago. I think a lot of the activism I’ve actually learned, and actually the rhetorical analysis I’ve studied, I got in Chicago, you know, early on. I remember too everybody in Chicago was in a political party, union, or a gang, And everything was in terms of territory, who you belonged to; but I think what I also learned is how these groups worked. Because at that time I could go from one group to the other, to the other, to the other, and I think it was because of the language skills I was developing. And actually what was wild about Chicago too was ethnic Chicago. So even in Bridgeport it was Italians, Irish, and the Lithuanians had just moved out and Mexicans were starting to move in, so we were part of those first early families. That was an interesting moment and time for Chicago, which kind of shaped the way I look at the world and it was the multicultural world, so yeah… Daniel Alarcón: It’s like, you came up in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural reality where a lot of your immigrant friends were in one way or another negotiating similar cultural terrain as you, even if their home language was italian or polish or whatever, right? And it’s interesting to me because a lot of the charges that have been leveled at Chicano studies or Mexican American studies is that it breeds this kind of hate, you know? it breeds this kind of separatism and anti you know, whatever. And it strikes me just talking to you it’s like I get right away that that’s not at all where you are coming from; that you are coming from a polyglot, urban culture that, you know, you grew up with Irish, you grew up with Italian, and you grew up with all kinds of people. And so how do you square that? How do you understand those charges that have been leveled against this discipline and sort of mesh that with your own experience? Tony Diaz: The Tucson unified school district had the brilliant Mexican American studies program in place, I guess it was 6 years, after the Department of Justice forced Arizona to implement culturally relevant courses. I think the far right Republicans had time to study it and they practiced. I guess one thing is, sometimes these attacks seem sophisticated, it’s just that some of these oppressors have time and energy to think about it, and what they came up with was to scare folks who are not familiar with Latinos or Chicanos and who don’t know what goes on in a classroom. They were able to come up with a scare tactic that says, “these courses breed resentment”. And what I had grown up learning was that for me to navigate all these different experiences, it was better to be around all these different folks; and to me, I had learned so much from it, that it has inspired a lot of my work. And really what we as Librotraficantes profess is quantum demographics, and the idea is that if I’m fulfilled with my history and culture, I’ve got the wisdom and intellectual framework to build bridges between different cultures. And that’s really the result. And that’s why I think ethnic studies is so valuable and critical thinking is so valuable. But we are going to look back at this era and quantity remember: “oh, so people were scared of kids reading books?” We’ll be like, “yeah, isn’t that crazy?” Because, you know, you’ve just gotta look back at history, like Cleopatra, she spoke so many different languages and knew so many different cultures, you know. It’s all these eras where people did that because there were international cities and figures. I think half of it is...Well, actually, we’ve been able to study a lot of what happened in Arizona, and I think we’ve gotten organized because of that.  Daniel Alarcón: Yeah, I want to talk about Arizona, because I want to talk specifically about HB 2281 and that’s what sparked this Librotraficante madness, right? That’s what sent you on this adventure, correct? Tony Díaz: When Arizona got crazy and banned Mexican American studies, and we heard about it through multimedia, we heard the students wanted their books back, we organized in 2012 the Librotraficante caravan to smuggle the banned books back and that was a 6 city tour. We had people donating books from all around the country, over 20,000 dollars worth of books. We started underground libraries and we were happy to have handed to books back to the students in Tucson. But that also exposed us to this attack on ethnic studies and critical thinking in particular and before Arizona banned Mexican American studies, I had founded a group called Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say back in 1998, so that group had been about 12 years old at the time, but it turns out we had actually been working with most of the writers who had wound up getting banned in Arizona. And as we looked at the list of authors...in fact, on our website librotraficante.com there’s a link to an anotated bibliography to all 84 books that were in the curruculum. Go down the list and we’ve either brought them to Houston, or had them on the radio show or worked with them in some way, shape or form. So that, basically, I called Dagoberto Gilb, I’m like, “hey brother, you’re banned in Arizona!”, and he is like “I’m so honored.” And then Bryan Parras, one of the other Librotraficante caravan founders, he said, “well, let’s do a caravan”. And actually, I came up with the word...what’s fascinating to me is that I’d come up with the word Librotraficante after one of our book fairs. So it was like midnight, we are breaking down one of the shows, and we are behind the George R. Brown in the dark with trucks and boxes, and I was like, “you know, if cop pulls up right now, he would be like ‘alright, what are you guys doing?’, we’d be like ‘we are librotraficantes’”, right? [laughs] you know? And that word had been there, but it didn’t gain currency til we actually had to smuggle them. Daniel Alarcón: There’s a performance aspect to the character of Librotraficante with the shades on, and you know, you look like you are in the background of a Goodfellas or Al Pacino movie. That image too is like...you know, it’s performance and it’s incredibly effective as performance, because it points out the absurdity of banning books. Is that a character? or is that you? Tony Díaz: You mean, am I really the Librotraficante? do I talk like that, act like that? It’s a little bit of me, right?  Daniel Alarcón: It’s like, “take the book, leave the cannoli” you know? Tony Díaz: That’s right. You know, it’s rhetorical analysis. No, it is performance. But I think that what’s been beautiful about this journey is that I think that everything I’ve ever done in my life has been practice for these moments.  Daniel Alarcón: Tell me about the students you’ve met, specifically in Arizona where I feel like perhaps more than anywhere else in this country, you know, Mexicans, Chicanos, Latinos generally, but specifically mexicanos are under attack. So tell me about the young people you met in Tucson. Tony Díaz: To me, when we talked to the students in Tucson, even as we were organizing, what was powerful is just how well versed they were, how much they knew about their culture. So you’ve got young organizers who have critical thinking skills, who know how to organize, and know their culture. People need to keep up to date too, because there’s two high schools Chicanas, two Chicanas in high school are taking the case against HB-2281 to the 9th district court of appeals in the Fall. And everybody’s freedom of speech is riding on their backs, you know? Maya Arce, who is a teenager and she is a strong advocate for our community. I guess my parents picked fields when they were teenagers, now our young have to go the Supreme Court to defend our culture. So it’s a little different, but that’s the strong youth of Tucson. Daniel Alarcón: It seems to be there’s a political fight ahead and a legal fight ahead. But there’s also a public opinion fight. And I was just wondering if looking forward, do you think that’s maybe….cultural fight is maybe the way that...but do you think that that’s the fight you’re going to win? the public relations fight? the court of public opinion? Tony Díaz: Oh, I have no doubt that this is a Chicano renaissance. Our culture was on the brink of extinction when House Bill 2281...was one sign of that moment. But this is a Chicano renaissance. We are going to win the court battles, we are going to win the battles of public opinion, we are going to win art -because only art can save us- we’re going to win in the artistic side, we are going to win in the history books, and we are updating the American Dream. If you look at historical cycles, every 40 to 50 years you’ve got to reboot democracy, and that job is falling on the broad shoulders of the Chicanos this time around. We are inspiring people to think, to feel, to adapt, and that’s what’s exciting about this movement. And it is the updating the American Dream, and what’s exciting is that on our watch we get to see all this come to pass. [Music: Desconocido, Fósforo] Daniel Alarcón: Tony Díaz is a writer and activist. He is the founder of Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say, and the author of The Aztec Love God. This interview was produced by Silvia Viñas. Special thanks to program associate Laurie Ignacio, and production intern Diana Buendia. The Radio Ambulante team includes Martina Castro, Camila Segura, Luis Trelles and David Pastor. Carolina Guerrero is Executive Director. Radio Ambulante: Unscripted is supported in part by PRI’s New Voices Fund, bringing new perspectives and personalities to public media. Donors to the Fund include Maureen and Michael Ruettgers and the Sara &amp; Evan Williams Foundation. Radio Ambulante tells the stories of Latin America. To hear more, visit our website –radioambulante.org. There, you’ll find links to our stories in Spanish and more content in English too. I’m Daniel Alarcón, thanks for listening.

Building Bridges and Smuggling Books with Tony Diaz

In May 2010, <a href="http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/hb2281s.pdf">Arizona House Bill 2281</a> ended Ethnic Studies, and in the process banned some of the most beloved and important books in the Latino and Latin American canon. Luis Alberto Urrea, Sandra Cisneros, Rudolph Anaya, Dagoberto Gilb, were just a few of the authors whose work was banned. Writer and activist <a href="http://www.tonydiaz.net/index.html">Tony Díaz</a> was among those who who were outraged about this. In 2012, he, and his allies, organized a caravan to smuggle banned books back into Arizona. In this video Tony introduces the caravan, which has now become a nationwide movement to defend Ethnic Studies. Learn more at <a href="http://librotraficante.com/">librotraficante.com</a><div class="media media-element-container media-default"><div id="file-69981" class="file file-video file-video-oembed oembed-video oembed-default oembed-youtube">

 
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 <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/l-n3tvPz5ak?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" title="Wet Books: Smuggling Banned Literature Back Into Arizona"></iframe> </div>

 
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