"Knowledge has always been dangerous . . ." --Sor Juana de la Cruz

In the United States of America, as we speak, books that would encourage Mexican American students to understand themselves and their cultural heritage are being removed, by law, from Tucson, Arizona's Mexican American studies curriculum. Ethnic Studies have been banned in Arizona public schools by a controversial anti-immigration state law, HB 2281. The result is the removal of a large number of books from the classroom--including Paulo Friere's famous The Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Shakespeare' The Tempest--because it might lead to discussions of race! A recent article in Salon.com compares this book-banning measure to similar actions in South Africa during Apartheid.

Sor Juana de la Cruz was criticized for reading such freethinkers as Erasmus. Now children in Tucson, Arizona are not only being deprived of Shakespeare's classic play, written in response to the settling of the New World, but are also being deprived of a curriculum that would foster their identity and offer all students a broader, more accurate representation of history.

But wait! American ingenuity--Latino ingenuity--arises.

You've heard of wetbacks--now we've got "wet books" in a program to smuggle banned books back into Arizona from . . . Texas!

Librotraficante.com

More on the TUSD ban of books associated with the Mexican American Studies curriculum. As one respondent points out, it's not just a ban on Mexican American authors, but also on Native American authors.