The Book Pushers...

By DUARDO PAZ-AMRTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - Now that Arizona has banned the teaching of Ethnic Studies in its state colleges and universities, while also cutting funds for books by Hispanic authors to public schools, a few Hispanics have banded to smuggle those same books into America's state of brotherly hate.

The operation is going by the name of Librotraficantes, and efforts are underway to ferry truckloads of books by Hispanic authors beginning this week. One of the pushers of the drive is Tony Diaz, himself a novelist. Diaz and his friends from Houston are enroute to Tucson and Phoenix with a load of books Arizona says it does not need or want.

As noted in a brief editorial carried by today's New York Times, the effort is "a response to an educational mugging by right-wing politicians, who enacted a state law in 2010 outlawing curriculums that advocate 'ethnic solidarity,' among other imagined evils."

Among the books Arizona has trouble with is "The House on Mango Street," a book by San Antonian Sandra Cisneros that tells the tale of a young Hispanic girl growing up in Chicago. It has been praised nationally and is often assigned-reading in high schol and college literature classes.

"Arizona has tried to erase our history," Diaz told The Times. "So we're making more."

Diaz and his group promise to hold a ceremony at the Arizona border, where they will wrap some of their books in plastic and carry the "wetbooks" across the stateline.

The Times calls the journey an "inspiring act of indignation and cultural pride."

For others sympathetic to the movement, mailing a book by an Hispanic author to an Arizona public school or college library might also help Arizona understand the idea that you can't remove a culture simply by banning books. Under the state's law, Mexican-American Studies was banned in Tucson's public schools last year...

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