Resettling the West

Segment: English-only in Torrington

Narrator: Torrington has a sizeable Mexican-American population and some recent immigration from Mexico. The disciplinary incident involving a Spanish-speaking school child prompted the local school board to restrict the speaking of Spanish in and around district school buildings.

Pamela Delgado-Garcia: In April of 1999, my son was a fourth grader at Trail Elementary, and there was another student who wanted to sit in his desk. She attempted to kick him out of his desk and he refused. He said "Tu no eres mi patrón," meaning, you are not my boss, and she went and reported to the teacher that Adrian said something in Spanish, and she thought it was something bad. My son was taken aside and told that he could no longer speak Spanish in school.

Marc McClanahan: The board adopted the policy on July of 2000. Now, the intent of the policy was to say that the district values and respects diverse languages and cultures and would not prohibit, restrict or censure the speaking of languages other than English, when there is a legitimate and documented educational justification.

Anne Gardetto: If for example, a school system rejects the mother tongue of an entire group of children, I think it sends a very negative message and can have a very adverse effect on the child. Language is integrally tied to self-esteem and so if the language is degraded in any way, it negatively impacts on the self-esteem of the child.

Pamela Delgado-Garcia: It is difficult for me to understand why they would do something like that because speaking Spanish is a part of who my son is. He is being raised in a home where two languages are spoken.

Marc McClanahan: The policy came under a lot of discussion and questioning. As a result of that, the board has rescinded the policy and is back to working with the complainant and the Office of Civil Rights to resolve the complaint.

Narrator: The Torrington school board effort to discourage foreign languages wasn't the first such effort in Wyoming. Several state legislators in the mid 1980's pushed for an English only policy in the State.

Carl Maldonado: When someone introduced the bill that English was the language and there would be no other language spoken, I thought that wow, is that close-minded, I mean, is that ridiculous, because why would you want to do that? Of course, I looked at that legislation as being as ridiculous as it was and it didn't get anywhere.

Narrator: Torrington school board policy was only the most recent in a century of discriminatory policies and practices against Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. Restrictive housing covenants remain on the books in Torrington subdivisions though federal civil rights laws make them unenforceable. And Mexicans attended their own school until 1954 when the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregated public education.

Virginia Romero: I lived in South Torrington and there were mostly Mexican people that lived there. When I was 6 years old, I went to the Mexican school or whatever they called it, but there was nothing but Mexican kids that went there. Well, there has always been discrimination here in Torrington and we couldn't go to the swimming pools, and even in the theater there was a left side: all of the Mexican kids sat on that side and the white people sat on the right side.

Pamela Delgado-Garcia: This is a very racist community, and for those of us who have grown up here, the difficulties we've had, it must be that much more difficult for those who are recent to our town. Nothing is offered to them, as far as, there are no signs that can help them, it is all English. The library offers no literature, nothing at all. When I went into the shoe repair store here in town, I walked in and the owner of the store approached me and he threw a card on the counter-top and he said, "Put your Martinez on this." And I said, "Excuse me, what do you mean by that?" And he said, "Aren't all you people named Martinez? All of you people look alike to me."