Modesto Rodriguez, a Pearsall, Texas native and Chicano political activist, spoke at a session of hearings in February of 1975 before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary House of Representatives regarding the 1975 Voting Rights Act Extension and Expansion. Rodriguez was accompanied by a member of MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund). In his statement, Rodriguez echos many of the barriers to voting cited by others such as Representative Barbara Jordan including threatening of jobs, economic intimidation, police presence in Mexican American precincts, and discriminatory practices such as ballot stub signing. Rodriguez asserts that all of these barriers ultimately can be classified as voter intimidation. Rodriguez added to his cited examples of voter intimidation events where voters were told directly, “If you can’t speak English, you should go home and not vote,” causing voters to leave the polls. In addition to his prepared testimony which he had added to the official record, Rodriguez recounted his experiences as a child in Texas being segregated from other students in Chicano only schools and being punished for speaking Spanish, both issues fueled by the fear of bilingualism in Mexican students.
The testimony of Modesto Rodriguez is the most important source used for this project. It does not contain much analysis of the law itself or remarks from highly regarded politicians but it does contain important information about the reality of voting as a Chicano in Texas. Rodriguez tells the stories of real individuals affected by the discriminatory voting practices in Texas. Rodriguez humanizes the issues addressed in the 1975 Voting Rights Act Extension and Expansion in telling the stories of others and of his own experiences. Without testimonies like Rodriguez’s, it is easy to get caught in the legal implications and wording of the Act and forget the reason the Act is being created. Rodriguez represents the Chicano people and voices the struggles of those who are voiceless, those who are the people impacted by the Act.
I personally have experienced this in Pearsall and if you have any questions you would like to ask me, feel free. But I wanted to say that in the school system out there, Spanish was something that was a disgrace to speak. I myself was punished for speaking Spanish in class. It was not that I was speaking any bad language or anything. That is my mother language and I can read Spanish better than I can read English. I guess you can gather that. But I had a hard time in the school systems understanding the process that somehow — the schools were segregated. The blacks were in black school, the Chicanos were in the Chicano school, and the whites were in the white school. I could not see why it was not until the sixth or seventh grade that we were integrated. Finally, we did not see why there was a difference, segregation. Finally, 2 years ago, they integrated. Now they are integrated from the very beginning, the first grade, but this has been only about 2 years ago. I could tell you honestly that I was also punished for speaking Spanish at least a couple of times, and I also was put out of the room into the hall for speaking Spanish; it was just something that I can not understand to this day. Some of these problems, I am saying, are very typical of Texas, and to this day I would say that at least out of all the Chicano counties in the State of Texas, maybe the metropolitan areas are a little better, but I consider all the rural counties just in the same conditions I am in.
Rodriguez, Modesto. “Testimony of Modesto Rodriguez, Pearsall, Tex., accompanied by George Korbel, and Al Perez, associate counsel, Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.” In Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary House of Representatives, 519-535. February 1975. https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=DY-qWoJ-nE8C&pg=GBS.PA518&hl=en.