UTRGV: ‘Taco Tech’?

Students recently learned that some people refer to UTRGV as “Taco Tech.” In the lecture, a professor asked students whether UTRGV should emphasize its Mexican-American identity.

Nearly 100 students learned that Taco Tech is not a nickname the university got overnight.

Mariana Alessandri, an assistant professor of philosophy, spoke to the students and proposed ideas on what it means to be a Hispanic-serving university. Her PowerPoint presentation illustrated how other students and people across America see the university.

The professor first began with the question, “Why Taco Tech?”

Better yet, “Why taco?” Alessandri said.

The room was silent.

Although no one answered, Alessandri gave an overwhelming array of answers.

First, she spoke about the percentage of Hispanic students who attend UTRGV. In Fall 2015, 91 percent of the students at UTRGV were Hispanic, according to Forbes magazine.

Alessandri’s slides showed that Mexican-Americans are seen as brown and poor and that poor brown people sometimes eat tacos.

“I’ve heard that Texas Southmost College is known as ‘Tamale Tech,’ so there’s another one,” she said. “So, we are sisters or something. Tamale Tech. Taco Tech.”

Students laughed, yet she did not.

“So there is taco, but why tech?” Alessandri asked. “What’s the tech part? Why not Taco University?”

Again, the students looked perplexed by the question, and amused by the answers.

“So, tech is kind of a like a technical school, which is not even seen as a real university,” she said.

She explained some people seem to think that those who attend technical schools are not smart.

The professor said some people think that real universities are expensive, unlike UTRGV. Thus, poor brown people cannot afford a real university. Therefore, people in the Valley, are poor and brown and not smart.

This is when the students started sitting straight and looking more attentive as the slides continued.

The next slide asked, “How does Taco Tech make you feel?”

As she read through the bullet-point questions, Alessandri asked, “Does it make you feel ashamed or angry? Does it make you want to hide and run as far as you can from the Valley? Do you think it’s funny?”

Alessandri broke the silence by saying that we could try to shed the “taco-ness” by eating fewer tacos and perhaps eating more exotic things like Brie and lobster.

“We are more than just mariachi, we also play classical music,” the professor said. “We are not just that. We are so many other things.”

Josue Puente, a Mexican-American studies junior said, “This is what my culture is and this is who I am. I like mariachi, but I also like Linkin Park.”

The professor wanted students to choose one of two options: Assimilation or Resist Assimilation.

“Do you want to prove that poor taco-eaters can be smart?” she asked.

Option one is that the school and its students assimilate by changing the foods, musical tastes and rituals, including holidays such as Día de los Muertos and Cinco de Mayo.

“In order for people to stop calling us Taco Tech, we should start eating ‘white people food,’” she said in connection with option one.

Gloria E. Anzaldúa, a UT Pan American graduate, Valley native, Chicana philosopher, poet, educator and a queer-, cultural- and border theorist, was ashamed to bring tacos to school.

“She would hide them,” Alessandri said. “She wanted to eat bologna and white bread like the normal kids. She felt ashamed of the food.”

The philosophy professor continued: “Let’s stop speaking Spanish; never learn it and never teach it to our kids. Let’s change our names so our Anglo teachers can pronounce them. Let’s make UTRGV look as neutral as it can.”

How would UTRGV look if the buildings and the landscape were more culturally bound, instead of looking like a university that looked like it could have been picked from anywhere in the U.S.?

“The university has already tried to adapt,” Alessandri said. “The university changed its name.  The mesquite trees and nopales and other native plants have been removed and replaced with palm trees. The buildings are bland and beige.”

Instead of hiding the Hispanic roots this university carries, why not celebrate them?

Option two: Resist assimilation.

Though Hispanics cannot control how they are viewed, people can control how they respond and react to the term Taco Tech.

For example, if people stop controlling and caring about how others see the university, students could get the education they want. Students could eat what they want. Have professors speak Spanish, as well as students having the campus they want, nopales and murals included.

“If we pushed for it, we could have it,” Alessandri said. “It is incredibly difficult for faculty to get a mural on this campus, but I believe it will be relatively easy for students to get a mural on this campus. If students want it, it will happen.”

In the borderland, people speak English and Spanish.

Alessandri quoted Anzaldúa: “Do not be ashamed of your language.”

UTRGV has the highest Hispanic enrollment in the United States.

“Why not celebrate it instead of hiding it? How can we take pride in who we are and where we are?” she said.

B3 Institute Executive Director Francisco J. Guajardo said, “This is the big issue. When UTRGV was founded, the board of regents, mostly white men, very conservative and appointed by the governor, said that ‘UTRGV needs to be a bilingual, bicultural, biliterate university.’”

What this means is that the university will be teaching classes in both Spanish and English.  In due time, Guajardo said that classes, such as biology and history, will be taught by Spanish-speaking or bilingual faculty members.

“The day is coming where we will have a greater opportunity to be much more self-actualized, as cultural and historical beings,” Guajardo said. “This critique is coming right in the middle of things that are just beginning to awaken.”