Oscar Vásquez

In August, I described Oscar’s plight. He was on the legendary 2005 team that won a national underwater robotics competition, sending MIT to second place. In 2009, he earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and received special recognition from commencement speaker President Barack Obama and ASU President Michael Crow. Then Oscar voluntarily returned to Mexico and applied to legally reenter the country. On August 30, 2010, after 361 days away from his wife and daughter, both U.S. citizens, Oscar was authorized to permanently return home. Kudos to Homeland Security and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which reviewed Oscar’s case and found it meritorious.

Justice prevailed for Oscar, but only with the help of extraordinary publicity and political energy. Joshua Davis got it started with his poignant article in Wired (April 2005), “La Vida Robot.” The achievements of Oscar’s team were highlighted by Nightline host George Stephanopoulos. His plight also received major coverage by Richard Ruelas in the Arizona Republic. Illinois Senator Dick Durbin even pushed for an expedited government review.

In an April 2009 policy brief, the College Board concluded that undocumented students in the U.S.A. are trapped in a legal paradox. They have a legal right to primary and secondary education and are generally allowed to go to college, but in Arizona and elsewhere, have been dehumanized by laws denying them financial aid with public funds. The College Board endorsed the DREAM Act on moral, humanitarian, and economic grounds. Our nation already ensures their K-12 education.

Check out the DREAM Act on the websites of Democratic Senator Durbin and Republican Senator Richard Lugar, who co-introduced this bipartisan legislation. It now has 40 co-sponsors in the Senate. The 2010 DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors) grants legal status to immigrants who entered the country as children and graduate from college or joined the military. The Department of Defense has judged the act as “very appealing” and “good for readiness.” Schools, universities and teachers support it as does the National Council of La Raza, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and CEOs of major companies like Microsoft and Pfizer.

President Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano strongly support the DREAM Act. It is the only immigration reform legislation the Obama administration has endorsed, with realistic prospects for passage. Arizona Senators McCain and Kyl are not on board yet.

Meanwhile, in Arizona, we’re gonna celebrate and have a good time. A party was held at Carl Hayden High School in September for Oscar Vásquez and robotics classmate Cindy Villa, who also triumphed over similar challenges.

The intrepid Joshua Davis is still on the documentation prowl, working toward realizing a film adaptation of the story. Oscar’s story is a good and just ending for a movie that could be this decade’s Stand and Deliver. May Oscar’s character win the Oscar.

“Illegal” is so

Laws are morally binding when they further justice. When they go against it, the virtuous thing to do is oppose them. St. Augustine, in Civitas Dei (City of God, 4.4), judged that “legality” without justice reflects the immoral will of the strong over the weak. “Take away justice, then, and what are governments but great bandit bands?” Why isolate S.B. 1070 and endow it with special significance? It is merely the latest instance of a long history of “legality” as the expedient of power. Focus on justice.

An African proverb goes, “Until lions have their own historians, histories of the hunt will glorify the hunter.” The U.S.-Mexican War ended in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The United States acquired over 500,000 square miles of valuable territory. As injurious as this was to Mexico, the Treaty “at least” provided property, language, religious freedom, and citizenship rights to the Mexicans residing in the territory. Almost every one of those rights was dishonored.  Might equaled right.

In 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, creating a moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. It was the first time federal law denied entry into the U.S.A. based on ethnicity. The law was extended with the Geary Act, and restrictions on Chinese immigrants continued until the 1920s. Eventually and expediently, the situation changed and justice peered through a slightly open door.

The Great Depression led to massive “repatriation” of both Mexicans and Mexican Americans. About 400,000 to 500,000 were deported. Federal deportation campaigns began in 1928 and intensified between 1929 and 1931, but really continued throughout the 1930s. With World War II, the situation changed and we needed Mexican agricultural labor. A new law judged as a splendid move in support of the war effort was passed allowing Mexican workers to migrate to the United States.

Then the war was viewed as a victory. What was legal changed. From 1944 to 1954, the number of undocumented Mexicans coming to this country increased by 6,000 percent.  It was concluded that workers were being exploited while newspapers were blaming immigrants for crime. Operation Wetback began in 1954, officially targeting “illegal aliens” but actually focusing on Mexicans in general. Police canvassed Mexican-American barrios across the southern part of the country. During 1954, one million immigrants were deported, including some U.S.-born children. It was “legal” until it became too embarrassing. By fall of the same year, funding ran out as the program came under increasing criticism. Because it was unjust, it became illegal.

Our community has historians and we know the record. We also know that esto va para largo, and those laws, as harsh as they appear for the moment, are transitory, expedient, political commodities. For so many reasons – historical, demographic, cultural, spiritual, moral, and economic – we will be here forever and one day past that. As will justice, which must always win out.

In 2004,

Members of the Falcon Robotics Club team, Oscar Vazquez, Cristian Arcega, Lorenzo Santillan and Luis Aranda, traveled to Santa Barbara, Calif., for the National Underwater Robotics Challenge for the first time, ambitiously choosing the highest competitive level. Unexpectedly, the Falcons took first place in technical writing. Overall, the MIT engineering school from Boston Harbor took SECOND place. The Falcon Robotics Club of Carl Hayden High School took the big piñata: FIRST PLACE.

High school teachers and club sponsors Faridodin “Fredi” Lajvardi and Dr. Allan Cameron sent out press releases. The response? Barely a yawn. The following year came Josh Davis’s story in Wired Magazine (April 2005) and Reader’s Digest May 2006 special issue, “America’s 100 Best Inspiring Stories and American People,” including the Falcons. ABC Nightline with George Stephanopoulos covered the achievement in May 2005. In November 2005, celebrating the 25-year partnership of ASU’s Hispanic Research Center, the College Board, and the Educational Testing Service, $10,000 was awarded to the Falcon Robotics Club.

These days both the students’ successes and profound disappointments are news on NPR, the Arizona Republic and other media sources.

Oscar Vazquez is a guy who prevails. He  came to the United States when he was 12 years old. He joined Junior ROTC in the ninth grade and planned a military career, but learned he was ineligible. He stuck with ROTC anyway. The Falcon Robotics Club became his salvation and guided his future. At least for a while.

Vazquez studied engineering with an ASU scholarship. He was featured in the recruitment brochure. In 2006, Arizona passed a law barring undocumented students from receiving state financial aid. Vazquez had to start paying out-of-state tuition. He worked in construction and received private donations and scholarships. Oscar was determined to resolve his indocumentado status. He was being denied college internships.

In 2009, President Barack Obama gave the ASU commencement address and personally recognized the graduates with extraordinary achievements, Oscar included. As he received his 2009 diploma, Obama and ASU President Michael Crow shook his hand and extended encouragement. The stadium roared with applause.

About 60,000 undocumented high school students graduate annually. The 2010 DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors), seeks to grant legal status to immigrants who came to the United States as children and went to college or joined the military. In his July 2010 speech in Raleigh, N.C., Obama expressed support of the DREAM Act.

After graduation, Oscar turned himself in to la migra and moved to Mexico, leaving his wife, Karla, a U.S. citizen, and his baby daughter in Phoenix. He works blue collar in Mexico. He wants to return legally, although he can relocate to another country where he will find professional work easily. Someday the federal bureaucracy will decide whether Oscar can, if that day ever comes.

Will we reject a U.S.-educated engineer, recognized by the media and by President Obama, and fiercely devoted to the United States? It is economically counterproductive, logically twisted and morally wrong to squander the resources of Oscar Vazquez and the other 60,000 kids whom we have nurtured from childhood.

Time is on our

We have made great progress in the 50 years since I was a teenage border crosser in the Eisenhower “Tortilla Curtain” era. I started job hunting when the convention was not “equal opportunity employer” but “Mexicans need not apply.”

Violations of our civil rights have been frequent since 1848. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded 55 percent of Mexico and theoretically provided citizenship and property rights to Mexicans living in the expanded U.S. Professor Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez at ASU reviewed the deportations or internments of citizens over 150 years; it’s a sordid history. To change this historic course, I make the following suggestions:

Let’s forge alliances with caring Anglos and organizations. Nationwide, the U.S. Council of Bishops and in Maricopa County the Valley Interfaith Project (VIP) actively educate and mobilize individuals and organizations. Working together, ¡Sí se puede!

We should not demonize our adversaries. Let them do the demonizing. We can poignantly document the cases that transpire right now of grievous violations of our civil rights. We can stir the instinct for fair play in most Americans.

We must be accurate. To claim that the new legislation is because suddenly Americans can’t tolerate the election of President Obama is not true, and we should have confidence in our fellow Americans. The 58 percent of voters who favor a law like Arizona’s in their home state is countervailed by 80 percent who support creating a program allowing undocumented immigrants to become legal. Most Americans don’t have fixed, passionate views on this subject. They are swayed short term by spin on each extreme. We are better served by honestly documenting the existing injustices – there is no shortage of examples to draw from. At a recent VIP rally at the Creighton Elementary School, nothing moved the crowd more than the individuals who recounted their own harrowing personal tribulations. As we did with the civil rights movement beginning in the 1950s, a strategy of sincere testimony will win the hearts of Americans once more.

We have huge positives and we should deploy them. We need a stronger voter registration campaign, and this crisis is a perfect opportunity for it. We should exercise our demographic power in the schools where soon the majority of students will cumulatively be minorities. We should partner with businesses, churches, and philanthropic organizations where we have the market power to be taken seriously or where we can count on caring and morally upright allies.

My last observation for now: Refute the strategy of those who conflate increased racial profiling around the state with the issue of border security. Senate Bill 1070 has nothing to do with the border, per se. More vigilantes along the Mexican-U.S. border will not impede determined terrorists who don’t enter that way. Over 40 percent of illegal immigrants fly into the United States on temporary visas and then stay illegally. Terrorists are well educated and financially supported. The notion that they sneak across the border together with desperate immigrants who take jobs that native-born Americans refuse to consider is just ludicrous.

In May

In July 1986, I left Binghamton University, SUNY, where I was provost for graduate studies and research, and became a professor at ASU. Eventually, I directed the Hispanic Research Center (HRC). Michael J. Sullivan, my assistant at Binghamton, soon came to the HRC and has been our bastion as chief operational officer of our Escalante-inspired projects for over 20 years.

I spent the summer of 1987 in residence at the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, developing a program to help Latino and other students. Greg Anrig had recently transferred from commissioner of education in Massachusetts to the head of ETS. Greg made known to me the huge files on the 1982 case where students from Garfield High School in East Los Angeles were suspected of cheating and then vindicated themselves by retaking the SAT. As a result, Escalante’s success had become a social phenomenon of which ASU was soon to become a part. From Princeton, I spoke repeatedly with Jaime and his admirable Garfield principal, Henry Gradillas. Working as an intermediary, reconciliation was achieved between the East L.A. community and the new senior ETS team. Both groups worked cooperatively to support the Advanced Placement (AP) program and other aspects of minority student achievement. It has been a good relationship since 1987.

Beginning in 1987, I was drawn to conceiving and piloting a project in Arizona that is now known as the Western Alliance for Expanding Student Opportunities (WAESO). The project includes students working together in peer-study groups, summer bridge programs between high school and college, faculty-directed student research projects, and the pièce de résistance, a vast expansion of the AP program with strong emphasis on parental involvement so students could get college credit for their high school courses. The Escalante philosophy and method still infuse much of WAESO. We teach our curriculum at a more advanced level than normal. We establish high expectations for student academic careers. We aspire to collectively insure that no student is left behind. As a result, for many years, Phoenix had the largest program west of the Mississippi to prepare high school teachers to teach the AP, primarily in minority-intensive schools where it did not previously exist.

WAESO is still going strong. We now cover every transition point: high school to college; college and graduation with a bachelor’s; graduate school and earning a master’s or doctorate; and faculty status up to tenure. Henry Gradillas graced us with keynote speeches at our academic events for a number of years. Over the years, we have served over 20,000 students, measurably increased the talent pool and number of jobs in Arizona, and brought in approximately $50 million to ASU and the state of Arizona from the federal government and many foundations. In 1993, we were awarded a $50,000 prize for “Pioneering Achievements in Education” from the Charles A. Dana Foundation for Project 1000. This was the largest annual prize in education in the United States, and we donated every penny to our minority projects.

The Escalante-inspired projects have been the most spiritually and professionally rewarding of my life. Thank you and bless you, Jaime Escalante. Your life is a model of commitment and effectiveness that inspires all of your admirers here in Arizona.

In 1964, Jaime Escalante and family traveled from La Paz to La Turbulencia. Why? God only knows. At first, his life contradicted the American Dream. In the end, he became the santo patrón of Latin@ academic excellence.

Esteemed in Bolivia, for a decade Jaime had taught physics and math at a Catholic school and at a prestigious public school. Yet in L.A., none of it “counted,” not even his 1955 university degree. Did he go back home? He returned to college for nine years, emerging in 1973 with a gringo B.A. from California State University. Jaime worked as a busboy, a cook, and finally a computer corporation employee. In 1974, credentialed to bureaucratic satisfaction, he got a job at Garfield High School, a school so downtrodden its accreditation was threatened. Not gearing to poorly performing students, instead he convinced students to take algebra. Five years later in 1979, Jaime had prepared nine students to take college-level calculus through the Advanced Placement (AP) program. Students in his calculus classes increased annually and gradually.

In 1982, the nation changed for the good, though it took years for the moral calculus to be graphed. Jaime’s 18 students succeeded on the AP calculus exam. The largest test-score challenge on record resulted. ETS asked 14 students to retake the exam. Twelve agreed and succeeded otra vez.

This achievement was “heard ‘round the world.” Latinos successfully taking the calculus AP exam shot through the roof. In 1988, Jaime received the Presidential Medal for Excellence in Education from Ronald Reagan; Jay Mathews published his book, Jaime Escalante: The Best Teacher in America; praise for Escalante entered the 1988 presidential campaign, and Stand and Deliver (directed by Ramón Menéndez with Edward James Olmos, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Andy García) was released.

Jaime Escalante died last Holy Week at the age of 79. A torrent of positive mass media coverage resulted, often missing the point. Escalante was headlined equally with the film, but he was already nationally recognized. He inspired the film and its unforgettable interpretation of Escalante by Olmos. Some suggested that Escalante’s achievements were attributable to his charisma and a repertoire of educational stunts.

This minimizes his achievement. Escalante expressed his formula for success best. “The key to my success is a very simple and time-honored tradition: hard work for teacher and student alike.” One student remarked, “If he wants to teach us that bad, we can learn.”

Another injurious claim, sometimes made by groups who had an invidious interest in stopping him from the very beginning, was that when Jaime left, the Garfield calculus program withered. The AP phenomenon quickly caught on to Garfield’s football rival, Roosevelt High School, and by the mid 1980s it had gone national. In 2009, 798,629 students nationwide took the AP, and 114,204 Latino students earned successful scores compared to 52,694 in 2000 and a mere 29,689 in 1996.

Jaime Escalante Ortiz delivered a life-long lesson of active love that directly or by inspiration has motivated the world. Jaime’s living lesson demonstrates the ability of faith, hope and love to touch us, especially the neglected youth of the barrios. Solve the set for love, the eternal constant, and integrate faith and hope, the first and the second derivatives into the calculus. Eureka!

Among AAHHE’s founders, two stand out primus inter pares. Loui Olivas is professor emeritus of business at ASU and the mastermind of the long-running annual survey of Arizona business activity. As amply documented by the latest report, Datos 2009: Focus on Arizona’s Hispanic Market, presented by SRP and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, it becomes more thorough and valuable each year. Alfredo G. de los Santos Jr. was vice chancellor for student and educational development at the Maricopa Community Colleges between 1978 and 1999 and currently is a research professor of the Hispanic Research Center at ASU. Thus, a major national educational resource was nurtured in the Valley of the Sun.

By virtue of what circumstances has AAHHE attained such depth and relevancy in so few years? Philosopher Baruch Spinoza said, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” No other organization was addressing the needs of Hispanics in higher education, nor recognizing Hispanic faculty and higher education leaders.

The AAHHE birthing is instructive. During its first lustrums, it was the Hispanic Caucus of the venerable American Association of Higher Education (AAHE), and when the mother graciously fell on her sword as her final purification rite, the infans noster emerged weaned and fully equipped.

A cautionary tale: Take not lightly the Hispanic force. The academic convention has been out of noblesse oblige to “accept” Hispanics as tokens. If they fill the till with memberships, maybe “upgrade” them to sideshows, even as their own original purposes may have gone awry.

AAHHE (http://aahhe.org) is a full-service provider. The dynamics that truly stand out include:

1) Networking. Hispanic-focused faculty across numerous disciplines can network and interact with each other in a way difficult, if not impossible, elsewhere;

2) Institutional support. Ever-increasing numbers of Hispanic presidents and senior administrators strongly support it. AAHHE has over 200 institutional memberships and is really succeeding in helping more Hispanics achieve senior-level positions;

3) Attention to STEM. Science, technology, engineering and mathematics get attention. Rice University Professor Ricardo Tapia participates, and he is the only Hispanic member of the National Academy of Sciences;

4) Recognizing achievements. AAHHE has solid award programs and its celebrated Tomás Rivera lecture program (named for the first Chicano CEO of a University of California campus) recognizes Hispanics.

5) Increasing the pipeline. The Latino/a graduate fellows program is awesome, with strategic guidance in completing a doctorate, job hunting, and interviewing and oral-presentation skills. It helps students write for academic journals, including publication partner The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education. The Educational Testing Service (ETS) is another partner with an outstanding dissertation competition and a student success institute;

6) Community colleges and the corporate sector. Last – not least – community colleges, the key to expanding the pipeline. They are a meaningful presence. Businesses are supporting AAHHE, financially and with speakers.

Again, I see the magisterial handiwork of founders de los Santos and Olivas!

No man is an island, entire of itself … any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.     —

Hispaniola is now an uncharted latitude. Spirited cooperation transcends past problems between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Some islanders use the original Taíno term Quisqueya or “mother of the earth” to indicate the common destiny of the madre patria. Thus, Dominican volunteers call their Haitian displaced-persons camp Quisqueya.

Economist Johnny Sánchez in the Dominican Republic’s Diario Digital RD hopes international mobilization will increase. Paraphrasing Sánchez: “Everything with M must move: money, médicos, militares, medicinas, maíz, miles de volunteers to alleviate la miseria y el miedo that permeates Haiti. Sánchez thinks Raúl Humberto Yzaguirre as U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic will genuinely help.

Raúl is a colleague and long-standing friend. Known for three decades (1974-2005) as CEO of the nation’s largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), he is no stranger to international strife. He developed a strategy to create support by Latino leaders for the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Former president Jimmy Carter made him part of a delegation to monitor the 1994 Mexican presidential election. He went to Chiapas, which had just withstood the initial armed incursion of the now mostly nonviolent and defensive Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN).

Currently the ASU presidential professor of practice in community development and civil rights, he will take a leave of absence to serve as ambassador. The enthusiasm in the Dominican Republic was so great that President Leonel Fernández publicly welcomed Raúl a few days before President Obama himself announced the nomination. José de la Isla, writing for Hispanic Link weeks before Haiti’s catastrophe, wrote that Raúl Yzaguirre’s nomination may signal a new, positive turn in the United States’ relationship with Latin America.

The Dominican Republic is the key land link to Haiti. These twin nations, cuates en simbiosis, must cooperate como jamás to deploy the roads, infrastructure, and medical resources of a robust Dominican Republic to a devastated Haiti.

The United States acted as soon as possible, and did so by sending American troops on humanitarian missions. The usual subjects – Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales – made knee-jerk protests that the U.S. had invaded Haiti. Listen to actor and supremely militant activist Sean Penn, who went to Haiti on his own. Penn is in a new, awesome and awful place. Aren’t we all? Holding back tears, he told Geraldo Rivera that the army was doing extraordinary work and he singled out the 82^nd Airborne Division in particular. Penn pleads for more humanitarian help, including military, outside Port Au Prince where the devastation is just as acute.

Carnal Raúl, enhorabuena on your nomination!  Now, a la obra. Your destiny is to be a key leader in confronting this catastrophe that, if nothing else, shapes the common destiny of Quisqueya despite previous conflicts of its Creole-speaking Haitians and Spanish-speaking Dominicans. We hope and pray for your success in establishing an international program of support that unavoidably the U.S. must spearhead and which requires every resource, including military logistics and supervision, to ensure the return to wellbeing of Hispaniola and the well-being of all empathizers worldwide.

’Tween the mountain chic of Santa Fe and the wannabe trendsetting of the City of Angels, where is there a critical mass of art galleries and a vibrant, creative community? In the Valley of the Sun, of course – Scottsdale and Phoenix! So it was destined and so it will be. What was less aparente was a new lugar más transparente. Advocates for Latin@ Arts and Culture (ALAC) has made that aire a reality. On December 4, 2009, its Galeria 147 debuted in an inviting spot in downtown Phoenix, and so our energetic Latin@ art community has an outpost in the Sun.

ALAC brings together young talent and veteranos who I have respected for years. These include the dynamic duo Carmen de Novais-Guerrero and Zarco Guerrero, whom I spotted as Don Diablo, and Stella Pope Duarte, who gave a poetry reading. Martin Moreno is from the good old days, decades ago in Michigan (Michoacán del Norte). Joe Ray’s artwork graces the front cover of The Cisco Kid: American Hero, Hispanic Roots published by the Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe. From Tucson, Cristina Cárdenas and Alfred Quiroz participate.

With Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon and a panoply of luminaries at the ribbon cutting ceremony, it felt like a homecoming. Without space to acknowledge all the movers and shakers, I’m going to plow into serious nostalgia. Marco Albarrán worked for our Hispanic Research Center to help minorities, and he has developed into both a splendid artist (Marco, I love what you’ve done with the lotería mexicana!) and an effective organizer. He’s a major force in ALAC and also of the Calaca Cultural Center (check them out! www.calaca.org). Jim Covarrubias, first VP of ALAC, has major roles – both organizational and curatorial – and his painting and involvement in the opera Guadalupe are important milestones. ASU filmmaker and Professor Paul Espinosa works tirelessly and effectively as a board member.

Dignitaries gather at the grand opening of the ALAC cultural center.

Rubén Hernández is a great publicizer of cultural events in the Valley and second vice president. ErLinda Torres, a longtime collaborator on various initiatives, is the ALAC board president and effective spokesperson. ASU Professor Rául Yzaguirre, founder of the National Council of la Raza and our new Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, helped ALAC establish itself.

The Latin@ art show mounted at Galeria 147 for the grand opening was the most poignant I’ve ever attended in Arizona. I’m still wowed by it. ¡Vatos y cholas, se aventaron! There are so many wonders that I can’t mention everyone, but I did put my money where my eyes were, purchasing Quetzal Guerrero’s new CD and a lovely work by Genaro García, La virgen de latte, that I look at in my office every morning. I invite you to the ALAC website, www.alacaz.org, to check out the photos of the opening taken by our maestro fotógrafo, José L. Muñoz!

ALAC has serious objectives, including an effective Latin@ arts network and advocacy for resources and funding already well on their way. Two key goals to work on – and I’m sensing that together we are going to make them a reality – are: 1) to initiate a campaign and strategy to create the first Latino cultural center in Phoenix, and 2) to provide art resources to Arizona’s educational system. These goals are are achievable, so let’s all jalar juntitos to make them a realidad.

In 1570, King

Carlos’s decrees failed, and the teaching of Christianity by missionaries was similarly unsuccessful. The Indian population resisted. Politically, New Spain was in profound crisis due to the confrontation between civil and religious authorities. Mexico’s first bishop-elect and Protector of the Indians, Franciscan Juan de Zumárraga, did not have official, authoritative status and was nearly assassinated by Nuño de Guzmán and his rapacious henchmen. Sixteen months before the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Zumárraga secreted a letter to Carlos V, telling him that the situation was so bad that only a miracle of God could redress it.

That miracle came in the form of Guadalupe’s apparitions and loving instructions in Nahuatl on December 9-12, 1531, to humble Saint Juan Diego, whose birth name, Cuauhtlatoatzin, translates to Talking Eagle in Nahuatl.

What followed in short order was without historical precedent. Zumárraga was soon convinced of the miracle, and within seven years, solid civil rule had taken root and some nine million native Mexicans enthusiastically received their catechesis in their own tongues and were baptized.  Little wonder that law followed reality and Felipe made Nahuatl the official language.

A robust body of literature ensued. To name a few examples: the Florentine Codex, a twelve-volume encyclopedia of Aztec knowledge compiled by Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún; the Crónica Mexicayotl of the Aztec royal lineage by Fernando Alvarado Tezozómoc; Cantares mexicanos, a collection of traditional songs in Nahuatl, and the Huei tlamahuiçoltica, a Nahuatl description of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.