They took a stand

Remembering the Edcouch-Elsa walkout of 1968

Alejandra Yañez  | THE RIDER

One of the walkouts across the nation that led to the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 took place in the Rio Grande Valley.

1968 was known as the year of the walkout and on Nov. 14 of that year, students from Edcouch-Elsa High School decided to boycott against the discrimination they faced as Mexican Americans. 

Lali Saenz Moheno, an Edcouch-Elsa alumna, was a key leader in the boycott. She had just graduated from high school at the time and was a member of the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO), which advocated for the rights of Hispanic students. 

“My brother came home one day, I had just come home from the college, and he told me that a group of young men that he hung around with were going to be kicked out of school because they were speaking Spanish,” Moheno said. “I told him, ‘No, they cannot do this to you. Enough is enough. They did it to me and now they’re doing it to all of you.’”

Moheno also experienced discrimination at the school. She said her counselors never spoke to the Mexican American students and did not encourage her to go to college. 

Mexican Americans were not allowed to speak Spanish at school and all the farmworker students were not allowed to be in the band, Moheno said.

“It was a really weird time, no appreciation of cultures,” she said.

When she found out her brother was undergoing the same persecution, she called MAYO for help. She said she had no intention of boycotting and simply wanted to negotiate with the school board on these issues. However, the board rejected their attempts.

Maricela Rodriguez Lozano, another alumna of Edcouch-Elsa High School, was an eighth-grader in 1968 and learned of the walkout through her older brother who was in high school. The junior high and high school were housed in the same building at the time. Her brother attended the meetings in preparation for the boycott and was talking to his mother about their plan the night before. 

Lozano overheard the conversation and wanted to participate since she felt the discrimination at the school.

“The Anglos would always sit in the front of the class and the teachers would make sure of that,” she said. “They gave first choice to the Anglos in participating in clubs and organizations.”

Asked how her parents reacted when they found out about her affiliation with the boycott, Moheno replied, “My parents right away supported us because they knew very well what I was talking about because they, too, had been discriminated against in the Valley over some jobs and things like that. So, they knew what we were talking about.”

Moheno said her role in the boycott did not end on the day of the walkout. She said there were many meetings in regard to the demands of the students and she wrote the first set of them.

Asked what she recalled from that day, Lozano replied that the older students were holding picket signs and were yelling across the street. 

She went to her first period class and during the next period she crossed the street, but once she crossed the street, they would not let her back into the school.

At the time, Lozano was a member of the cheer team, student council and had just been voted the football sweetheart. After the walkout, she was reprimanded and stripped of all her extracurricular memberships and honors.

Lozano said she is proud that she did the right thing, but the humiliation that she and her family endured afterward to keep her from being expelled was grueling. 

“They were busing a lot of students over to La Joya and in order to not be a part of that I had to go in front of the board and the administrators and ask them for forgiveness,” she said.

However, Lozano was still suspended for about two weeks. About 175 students were expelled from Edcouch-Elsa High School because of the boycott.

She said few students asked for forgiveness and the main leaders were bused to La Joya High School and not allowed back to Edcouch-Elsa.

Asked how it feels to know that she was a part of the walkout, Lozano replied, “I’m very proud, and if I was asked, ‘Would you do it again?’ Yes, I would, but it does bring back a lot of ill feelings still. Like I told you, the humiliation that I put my mom through by walking out. I know she knew that it was the right thing to do but she just didn’t like to cause any trouble.”

Moheno said she paid the price for her affiliation in the walkout as well. 

“I wasn’t invited to a lot of the reunions or homecoming games and that was the price I paid,” she said.

Despite the consequences, Moheno said she is proud of the results from that day and of the work everyone did to get the school to where it is today.

“Eventually we had a very big impact and you can see that today,” she said.

In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Bilingual Education Act, which paved the way for Hispanic representation at the federal level. The act “encouraged instruction in a language other than English as well as cultural awareness,” according to the National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education website, ncela.ed.gov.  In 1974, the act was amended to define “a bilingual education program as one that provided instruction in English and in the native language of the student to allow the student to progress effectively through the educational system.”

Asked what message they have for today’s Hispanic students, both women replied that students should be proud of their culture, speak up for what they know is right and not be afraid to make changes when necessary.