To My Fellow Mexican Youths

We are the children of Mexico and the future of the United States. We are the bridge jutting out from towering temples in the mist stretching proudly onward to the vision that lives through our success. Our ancestors' and parents' dreams grow to life with every one of us in college, in the professions, in politics. We are a hard working people. We cannot be denied! Our grades, our degrees, our votes, our tongues...they cannot deny us! Their racial epithets are not mountains. Their whites only signs are not knives. But, education is the snow that covers the mountain and the rock that bends the knife. Our parents do not speak English. We can. Our parents cannot vote. When we come of age, we will. The only force stopping us is ourselves. We are as American as they. They cannot deny us! We speak as well as any white person and learn as well as any race. School is how we become American. We must and can prove ourselves. It is an unfortunate truth we have inherited. We have to work harder because we are Mexican. Because we are brown. Because our culture is foreign to them. But, our fate is not in the ashes of Montezuma's fallen kingdom. Here, we have opportunities non-existent in la patria. Here we can make a real life for ourselves, our families, and our future children. The modern world values education. The future requires it. If we are to rise as a people, then we must meet this challenge. We can overcome the weight of our social condition. We have a choice to fail or to succeed. To drop out of school or to go to college, get a good job, and lift our communities. With education, we will earn the respect of the government and the elite classes. We will earn welcome into the powerful inner circles of high society. We will be American to Americans. The success of our people is ours, everyone of us. This is the way, the only way where other paths have sealed. We can conquer poverty and racism. "EDUCATION is our only weapon!"

Jose Rodriguez
Mexican American Movement (MAM)
Mexican Voice, 1938