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By Guillermo Rojas
Chair
Chicano Studies
University of Minnesota

A Working Paper for the Interdisciplinary Program in Public Policy and Minority Communities

Journalists, like political policy specialists, are forever presenting a partial reality of "the event," "the story" or "the issue" reported as part of "their work," "their assignment" or "their task." We are very aware that even our very own "effort," "essay," or Roy Wilkins Seminar Paper is also a partial reality, with one major difference. My effort is to illustrate how limiting and how microscopic is the view of the observer pretending to represent an objective account, making it a subjective account at best. These representations will be narrow and driven by ideology, by profit, by politics, or by the explicit intent to privilege one segment of society or some latest issue or discursive metaphor, be it class, race or gender.

Thus, when we try to create policy with communities of color in mind, our betrayal is always for the mainstream view. This view can never be abolished, for the discursive writing is "public policy." If it is not written, the spoken account, retold in groups, becomes public lore; eventually, depending on its repetition, it could become "folklore." This can never be substituted for the written Public Policy, the one destined to order society, control society, or privilege a segment of society. By its very nature public policy is always discursive and presented as local, state or federal statutes. To argue otherwise is to sink into the abyss of nonsense.

While we make efforts to speak to the needs of the communities of color as equals in listening, in taking careful notes of constituents comprising a particular community and in summarizing their perspectives on the potential solutions to the problem under review, the ultimate goal of the public policy creator is the document to be voted up or down by some political body making decisions for its implementation. The very act of presenting public policy documents/studies before the governing bodies for their approval betrays the spoken/oral tradition and the communal way of life, in which people supposedly sit as equals and reach consensus to be presented as public policy. The written policy becomes one more dialogue with the potential of dialectic and oppositional give-and-take. It becomes one more document in the grindstone of the mainstream hegemonic structure, the discursive ways of knowing. The interaction with the communities of color permits the individual voices and concerns to be written into the document. The discursive document, presented as collective interests, collective dreams, enters the political process and is at the mercy of the power represented by the votes passing judgment on the issues presented.

This system of thought and political process does not permit the communal traditions of the past. Where do casinos bank their monies? In the discursive ways of the mainstream banking and accounting systems with the latest technologies and the latest systems of securities. The money exits the community and enters the organized and controlled world of high finance.

Much discussion in our Ford Grant Seminar over the last year has centered around "sustainable environments," "sustainable economy" and "sustainable agricultural spaces." None of these models serve the minorities of color, with the exception of the American Indian community on the reservation. There the possibility of sustainable environment, sustainable economy, is a slight possibility, but even there the model suffers from enormous external restrictions. The reservation and base often times is within a state or federal preserve and must, by force, deal with the hegemonic, discursive statutes that govern the migration of wildlife, the restrictions on hunting and fishing. So even on the reservation, "sustainable environments" is a difficult proposition.

Much of the appropriation of the term "sustainable" comes from the international front, where communal life struggles against the encroachments of rampant international capital. It is in the global economies of international proportions where the debates of "sustainable environment" or "sustainable economies" become serious questions. There the native citizens of a particular global land base enter into discussions of how to survive by preserving traditional cultures and traditional agricultural skills, as well as by preserving crafts and other industries that have provided sustenance in spite of large demographic changes in the communities.

There are few opportunities in the United States where such discussion is appropriate. At the University of Minnesota, there is a graduate program in Sustainable Agriculture Systems. This program is studying food production destined for the largest consumer markets in the world. The graduate program is not about designing public policy for communities of color, but rather the study of the historical, biological, ecological and agricultural ways of producing agricultural economies. It is not concerned with the communities affected by these technological advances. Even on those American Indian reservations where casinos provide a source of revenue, it is only in the rarest of cases where there are indeed "sustainable environments." The reservation functions as a land base that the tribal councils can govern and where they can act autonomously and with sovereignty. The casino is in close proximity to a megalopolis which continues to provide the gambling resources in such proportions that among certain metropolitan populations there is evidence of a reallocation of economic resources. These sustainable environments on a few American Indian reservations will continue to court reallocation of resources as long as the law and order structure prohibits gambling in the mainstream of America.

In the other 99.99 percent of the communities of color, public policy becomes a battlefront rife with racism and bigotry, stemming from the heritage of colonial life.

Current efforts to reverse the mainstream practice

My colleague, Cecilia Martinez, Ph.D. Public Policy, teaches a course on "The Color of Public Policy." This course looks at the patterns of economic development in the Twin Cities’ communities of color. In an ongoing seminar supported by a Ford Foundation Grant we have gathered a number of cultural specialists from ethnic studies at the University of Minnesota and Metro State University to look at different ways of theorizing the "Communities of Color." We are attempting to break out of the Minnesota quagmire that repeatedly studies the Twin Cities communities of color with poor results. In the end the problems of jobs, broken homes, alcohol and drug dependency, lack of educational opportunities, and urban flight persist. Why can we not break the generational cycle of the same never-ending socioeconomic conditions?

These questions have persisted in the discussions and the questioning of ongoing research practices in the Twin Cities communities of color. It has become apparent that even in the 90s communities of color were never participants in their own self-determination. These findings suggest that American Indian communities have never been consulted about their wishes, their perspectives on problems and the possible solutions concerning unmarked ancestral burial grounds, as well as land rights and sovereignty issues. (For the first time an American Indian addressed the Minnesota Legislature. Perhaps we are in new times and the year 2000 has not even arrived.)

Economic development in the communities of color is always seen as a solution to minority problems and never as one more capitalist design that pretends to benefit the group under study. In fact, this economic development benefits directly members of the dominant political and hegemonic structure. Construction or other urban renewal contracts are performed by large companies and, occasionally, when affirmative action has been employed, the contracts benefit the corporate owners bidding for the contracts. At best, the community of color might gain from menial workers hired in the construction project. Studies have indicated a few minority jobs are distributed to the adjacent communities of color with the larger profits going to the companies that own the land, the banks that invest the monies, the public that receives the interest from the bank loans and the major contractors building the development zone.

Again, money makes money. The community is rewarded with few direct improvements in people’s marginal lives.

This practice of public policy and economic development tends to become a tug-of-war between those keeping the budget ledger discussions. Everything concerning public policy centers around "capital," as profits in contracts, as profits in interest rates or as direct wages to the workers involved in the economic development.

The problem with community development studies

The New York slave burial ground recently discovered by construction workers illustrates the problems and some alternative solutions. Upon discovery of the "slave burial ground," the New York city politicians, including Mayor Dinkins, recognized the invaluable historical archeological digging discovered by the workers bringing economic development to the city of New York. In this case, the city managers decided to safeguard this invaluable finding and accord some respect for the deceased. These remains are being studied and will, after the fact, be laid to rest in some historical memorial -- but only after serving the interests of the need to create knowledge on this important archeological sites and to preserve it for future tourists, national and international, who will pay handsome fees to view the site.

Every city in America is faced with diminishing tax bases and political decisions are increasingly governed by the considerations of megamalls, sport arenas and other tourist attractions. American Indian casinos, ethnic museums and ethnic entertainment, have all become the new cash cows, as long as mainstream America supports these efforts to distribute wealth based on leisure and entertainment enterprises.

As our efforts have continued to develop new curriculum that touches directly on the communities of color in the Twin Cities, it has become apparent that practitioners of conventional policy analysis need to look into the histories, cultures and social dynamics of minority communities for whom the proposed studies promise to deliver economic development. Decisions on structure and methodologies for the studies of communities of color are imposed from the top and these often meet with resistance from the communities of color. The problematic difficulties are never considered in the study of the communities. There are no terms to be negotiated or shared with the communities. These decisions are often executed with economic gains or profits for the players involved. In avoiding the consultation process and the validation of community voices the community perspective never becomes a participatory voice in the process of empowering the collective will and vision of the community. Consequently the observer addresses the problem from an old set of racial, historical and cultural views that fail to illuminate the true and genuine passions, longings, desires and interests of the community under review. In the end the public policy study is resented as a utopian, western, linear discourse, which pretends objectivity but, in fact, comes out of the sociolect shared by the mainstream. If public policy forgers and practitioners hope to empower the community of color, they must listen and record that voice carefully, as co-equal forgers of the intended public policy.

Journalists and the policies for funding political campaigns

In the March 9, 1997, Star Tribune, Eric Black’s, "President carried fund-raising to new level," quotes Frank Sorauf, emeritus professor of the University of Minnesota: "I don't see anything new here. The president and the vice president raised money. Shocking! Do we think that the storks bring campaign money?"

In the same article Black quotes Walter Mondale, Minnesota’s seasoned political campaigner. "The average citizen can't participate in this game [political fund-raising], can't afford this game, looks at it and wonders how on earth public policy could not be affected by the power and compelling force of money in politics."

These observations by two deans of American politics illustrate the connection between money and public policy. [This again reinforces my theoretical premise that all public policy stems from capital] The significance of the Sorauf and Mondale statements is not that only the rich have access to those in political power who make decisions on the business of America, but that the poor are excluded. [Again this reinforces my premise that public policy is never made by the poor.] We find the majority of the disenfranchised communities of color among the forty million Americans below the poverty line in the United States. These poor Americans do not have access to the policy makers nor to those who produce public policy studies in this country.

Historical, political, racial and economic omissions

We theorize that these policy decisions are historical, economic and culturally chauvinist and often stained with privilege, marginalization or cultural insensitivity. These discriminatory practices have been in place since the colonization of the Americas on five geographic fronts--the lands explored for economic reasons by the Dutch, the Spanish, the English, the French and the Portuguese. All these colonial models privileged their national monarchies and their merchant classes. Howard Zinn, speaking about the discovery of the New World, states: "Spain was recently unified, one of the new modern nation-states, like France, England, and Portugal. Its population, mostly poor peasants, worked for the nobility, who were two percent of the population and owned 95 percent of the land. Spain had tied itself to the Catholic Church, expelled all the Jews, driven out the Moors. Like other states of the modern world, Spain sought gold, which was becoming the new mark of wealth, more useful than land because it could buy anything." (Zinn, A People's History of the United States, 2)

In addition to the historical model outlined by Zinn, we also undergird our theorizing with the philosophical perspective of Ernst Cassirer, renowned Swedish philosopher, who taught at Yale during the last four years of his life. Charles Hendel in his forward to the text, Cassirer: The Myth of the State, says: "Whenever Professor Cassirer treated of any subject he not only passed in review with fine understanding what the preceding philosophers had thought but he also brought together into an original, synoptic view whatever related to the subject from every aspect of human experience--art, literature, religion, science, history. In all that he undertook there was a constant demonstration of the relatedness of the different forms of human knowledge and culture." (Cassirer, Ernst, Cassirer: The Myth of the State, p. viii)

One of the most difficult issues in the modern history of the welfare state is how best to address the needs of the underclass, mother and child, old, disabled, immigrants, recognizing that the policymakers are the upper-class, the hegemonic, the class which buys its access with political contributions. The underclass, the minorities of color, who become the subjects for whom public policy is produced, never participate in this political process. Consequently their views from the margins, their views from their historical and cultural disenfranchisement are never heard, evaluated or even considered in the potentialities of solutions.

Here I would like to interject two different and distinct participatory opportunities which will illustrate the marked differences with which we as a society encode our living realities and which are forever present in the sociolect and idiolect of those who inscribed the language of discursive policy in the United States.

Hispanic policy makers as represented in the "Hispanic" journal

Alex Avila reports in the March 1997 Hispanic journal that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has lost its solidarity over the policy to isolate Cuba or to engage in open dialogue with the "communist island country." Avila reports that "Florida's Dade County--Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen--abruptly resigned from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) when Representative Xavier Becerra, D-California, was elected chairman of the coalition that was originally designed to show unity among the 21 Hispanic members of Congress. (Hispanic, March 97, 10)

What is the beef among these congressional policy makers? The fact that three "Mexican Americans are among nearly two dozen members of Congress who have ventured to Cuba in the past year in an attempt to reexamine the U.S.-led isolationist policy toward the island." (Hispanic, March 97, 10)

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart described the Becerra-Torres trip as "a gross insensitivity toward the pain of all who have been victims of the Cuban tyranny." This observation is based on the sociolect and ideolect of the Cuban historical and cultural roots as they know them. Their feelings are politically correct and in unison with those Cubans who wish to return to the Island and reclaim the privileges inherited from earlier colonial Spanish models. Fidel Castro broke away from that cultural vestige of slavery and oppression. He has established a government where all the races participate in the system that they have chosen to govern their public citizens, a system that does not permit privilege based on race or wealth, rather on what the individual contributes to the entire society. Later we shall inspect the historical and cultural roots of the Caribbean Islands and its system of differentiations.

The Rodney King incident, the media, and the judicial system

When the Rodney King beating was videotaped fortuitously by a public citizen with no political or ideological agenda, the entire world viewed the horrible police practice and the travesty of justice by members of the Los Angeles Police Department. Mainstream American viewers witnessed for the first time what is a normal occurrence for Los Angeles minorities. This experiential learning, lived and witnessed vicariously through its repetition, became part of the American sociolect. The idiolect of the Los Angeles Police was revealed for the racist brutal practice that it is.

From one single act America witnessed and learned what people of color know about Western rage and violence. What escapes the viewer is the genesis and the reality of this sociolect and idiolect. It is not condoned in the public life of the country, yet it is practiced in all communities of color, wherever the hegemonic ruling elites practice a differentiation based on color. This differentiation and practice in America is not only that of the police force. It exists in hospitals, churches, schools and the work place. The practice becomes part of our ideology and practice of discursive policy-making.

In the aftermath of the publicity, Rodney King, in his television interview, stated: "Can we just get along?" Many interpreted King's plea as a pusillanimous reaction to the beating. Some regarded it as an Uncle Tomish response. What people could not fail to hear was the plaintiff and lamenting voice of his plea. It was a plea for healing, equality and coexistence. These plaintiff voices are the backbone of the American jazz blues singer. [That is why not every Tom, Dick and Harry can sing the blues. You have to live it in the flesh.] There are other singing traditions within the African American tradition and is the Chicano-Mexicano tradition of the corrido. These musical forms are efforts in which the "persona" within the structure expresses the pleas for a better tomorrow, a better and more just future.

When the police officers charged with the beating of Rodney King were tried in Simi Valley, California, the community's sociolect and idiolect found the officers not guilty. This microscopic view of reality was not shared by the entire country. Yet, the Simi Valley jurists had seen the white police officers brutalize an unarmed black citizen. In their deliberations they acted on their feelings and their desires to support the police heroes and found the brutal officers not guilty.

Three years later two different trials, one criminal, one civil, saw how two competing sociolects and idiolects clashed in their view of the facts in a brutal and vicious murder case. Justice was interpreted from the sociolect of each jury, one predominantly people of color who lived in Los Angeles County, one predominantly white and living in suburbia. Again, the sociolect and idiolect informed the groups in different ways. This proves that lived realities are the motivators and the bases from which we make informed decisions.

The communities of color in the inner city perceive reality from a different perspective than that of the suburban commuter. When the public policy-makers review the facts on which a new public policy is to be developed, the communities of color are systematically excluded. This exclusion is clearly hegemonic and one-sided and exclusive of the sociolect and idiolect of the policy-makers. We have seen how in two historical moments, city and urban dwellers have interpreted the facts from a different perspective and arrived at different conclusions.

Roots of racial, historical-cultural and economic differentiations

The historical discursive legacy of the Americas is rooted in the colonial documents of superiority and inferiority. The historical evidence of racial inequality and economic interest is found in the wealth of colonial documents. The political/legal machinery established the advantages enjoyed by the ruling hegemonies then, be they New France (Canada), British New England, New Spain, New Amsterdam, or Brazil. As Professor Frank Sorauf said: "Do we think that the storks bring campaign money?" We need to ask, "Do we also believe that Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand supported the exploration of the New World for Christendom?" No, Isabella and Ferdinand invested their monies for exploring the New World for economic gains. Upon review of the Spanish Royal Decrees the reader can see how the Spanish monarchs appointed governors for the Spanish Carribean Islands. These governors were given explicit orders to use indigenous and African labor for the production of wealth for the Spanish monarchs and Spanish appointees.

In the case of the New England states, the Virginia slave laws of 1660 also reveal the first public policy and the sociolect driven by the ideolect that the identity of children rested with the identity of the mother. Children from European masters and African women slaves were identified as African and in turn denied the paternity of the master (whiteness) and his obligation for rearing the child. We all know that African Americans are a mixed population of Indian and European, yet in the early documents European paternity is denied. This cultural practice is learned by male children as part of a sociolect which persists to this day. It is part of the warp and woof of the discursive arguments for "unwed mothers on welfare rosters," divorced women with children who receive no alimony or child support. These cultural male patterns never become a part of the public policy to remedy the household with one parent.

In Santa Fe, New Mexico, a 1611 Inquisition document establishes how the indigenous communities complained about the abuse of the indigenous women by the Spanish colonists. Our review of the three colonial documents exhibits a marked patriarchal privileging of the European male.

These legacies are never studied by the hegemonic voice looking for new statutes or new "policy studies" destined to address and solve the needs of the community of color studied. Just as Cassirer looked at how history, philosophy, art, literature, religion and science are all interrelated I will present evidence that contemporary policy discourses share a narrow subjective perspective that does not take into consideration the cultural and historical plaintiff needs of the communities of color in the Americas. Remember that just as juries have been divided in how they see the world of American jurisprudence in California or Florida, the same is true of our lived cultural experiences, which resonate in our deepest thoughts and feelings in every sphere of our experienced life. We come to the roundtable of discussions with preconceived sociolects and idiolects that inform our feelings and our biases just as much as the two Hispanic Congressional leaders in Florida who only refer to the lived experience of the exiled rich Cubans who lost their properties in the normal course of events and revolutionary political change.

Case study of colonial public policy

Richard Konetzke's "Documentos para la historia social de hispanoamerica" (Documents for the social history of Hispanic America) provide a wealth of primary documents that establish every conceivable social and economic relationship between all the peoples of the New World. In the very first royal decree issued by Ferdinand and Isabela, in Barcelona, on the 29th of May, 1493, the majesties of Spain accept Christopher Columbus's assertions that the natives "did not have law nor structure." The Spanish monarchs go on to say: "It has pleased and pleases Our Monarchs because it is proper that everything be done with respect to the service of God our Lord and the grandeur of our holy Catholic faith." Cassirer argues that there is no such thing as a "primitive mentality": "In modern linguistics the very term and concept of a primitive language has become highly questionable. A. Meillet, who has written a book on the languages of the world, has told us that no known idiom can give us the slightest idea of what a primitive language may be. Language always shows us a definite and thorough-going logical structure, ..." (Cassirer, 13) The assertion by the Spanish monarchs does not make true or real the lack of structures in the indigenous world. It only justifies their interest in restructuring and reorganizing the space in the new world which controlled the home, the family of those encountered in the Carribean Islands whereby they would become more productive cultivators and miners for the production of wealth and taxes.

Ten years later the monarchs in another royal decree issued the 20th of March, 1503, Alcala de Henares, and the 29th of March, 1503, Zaragoza, proposed a number of "policies" regulating what the King and Queen of Spain call "our 'Hacienda' (real estate and capital investment)." The first policy is that "the Indians live together as a community (pueblos). That the Indians not live throughout the forests but in the pueblos and that each have their house, their wives and children, and their farm plots for cultivation and domestic animals. That in each town there be a church and a religious attendant in charge of teaching the doctrine and religious education of the Holy Catholic Faith. That in each community there be a known person to administer in our name [the Monarchs] the grant entrusted to him. That the Spanish citizens in the community be subject to his justice and that there be no abuses to their persons nor their properties. That the Spanish citizens oversee that the Indians serve in those assigned activities fulfilling our service."

The King and Queen also directed that "sufficient distance be maintained that one community not interfere with the other communities and that each Indian be provided enough land for cultivation and domestic animals, so that each could appreciate what was his and would diligently care for his field and protection of it."

The King and Queen reiterate that "the Indians be protected from any damages caused by the Spaniards. That the Indians, their wives, their sons, their daughters be protected and that no one cause any harm to them as has been done up to these times. That Indians desiring to work of their own volition be paid their just daily wages, that our Governors be able to tax these wages."

"That our Governors, nor the persons appointed by the Governor to oversee the Indian communities be permitted to trade, sell, or barter for insignificant items, their Indian lands or goods. That when these exchanges take place that they be compensated with clothing articles or just prices.

"That the Indians dress as Europeans (gente de razon = reasonable people).

"That the communities have a religious attendant. That the attendant build a house for the instruction of children. That this instruction consist of reading, writing, crossing one-self, learn to say confession, the Our Father, and Hail Mary, the Creed and learn how to sing the hymn ‘Salve Regina.’

"That each member of the community be listed; that each be baptized, and that their children be baptized. That each child be sent to church where they can learn their Christian ways and that their soul be saved. That no Chieftain abuse the Indians and that the Indians be treated well, that they be instructed well and treated as any Spanish vassal.

"That the Indians not be taught blasphemy by the Spanish citizens. That the Indians not be permitted to practice their old ways; that they not be permitted to take steam baths nor paint their bodies, nor take emetics as they do now. That the Indians learn the Catholic religious celebrations and be prohibited to practice their old traditions.

"That hospitals be constructed and alms given be used for the benefit of the Indians.

"That the Indians be taught to tithe the church. That the Indians pay the Monarchs their tributes as vassals.

"That the Governor and other appointed authorities and religious attendants marry the Indians in the Holy Mother Church, and also promote that Spanish citizens marry Indian women, and Christian women marry Indians so that they be instructed and learn to communicate with one another. This intermarriage will lead to assimilation and transformation of the Indians into ‘European ways’ (gente de razon).

"That the Indians and Spanish citizens confess and comply with other religious observances and that our Governor support financially all efforts that comply with these religious obligations."

The 1503 royal decree ends with solicitation for advice on how best to exploit the Indians in the gold mining fields. Should Indians be paid wages? Should they be fed? Since the Indians are our charges, what rights should we extend to them? Or should we assign them to work a number of days or a period of time? Or should we order the Indians to work in the mines and have them pay us a percentage of the diggings extracted? What do you recommend that we do so that our holdings increase in value and that the Spanish citizens best take advantage of the Indians?

Here in this 1503 decree we readily see the "economic policy" of the day. The organizing of the community in its social, political, legal and religious life would produce great dividends for the monarchs as vassal tributes and tithes to the Church. The decree also speaks to equality under the law, assimilation to the Spanish way of life in dress, word and deed. This "economic policy" is entirely different than that of the English culture in the Virginia slave laws of 1660, which have left a national legacy of denial of paternity and obligation to nurture and support children in marriage and out-of-wedlock.

Ros-Lehtinen's and Diaz-Balart's criticism is hypocritical at best. Their concern for the suffering of one million Cubans in the United States whose properties are being exploited for the benefit of the 13 million Cubans remaining on the Island is one of those amnesiac statements that deny that the island, under a socialist government, benefits the children of all the slaves once brought to Cuba to cut sugar cane. This government has benefited, not caused suffering and pain, to the many public citizens of Cuba. Our race relations in the Dade County area have also suffered from the same denial of pain that has produced the microscopic racial views in California. Dade County policies between the city police and its public citizens have been just as violent as those of California. Its racial, historical and cultural roots stem from the same superiority-inferiority complex.

The European monarchies of France, England, Spain, Holland and Portugal exported individuals with various sociolects regarding racial superiority. These individuals produced the mixed races of the Americas. Florida today has become the same Mecca for French African descendants that Los Angeles has become for the Hispanics. The primary difference is that the Cuban officer on the L.A. Police force did not stop the police injustice on Rodney King. Now Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart claim that the Miami Cubans suffer from the trips that Torres and Becerra have taken to reexamine the isolationist policies of the Communist island.

The sociolect and idiolect that inform the Becerra-Torres trip is one of solidarity with the Hispanic brothers on the Cuban Island and their extensive racial mixture -- European, African and Indigenous. Their desire to break down the isolationist policies of the United States against Cuba speaks to a desire for stating a solidarity with all the poor people of Cuba. After all, the rich Cubans are in Miami. Public policy for the communities of color, be it Hispanic/Latino public policy, will always be tinged with the ideological bent for either support for the rich or for a solidarity of the community, a community which we know has no money, but which is constructing its own discursive ways and which could be coupled with the ever growing number of votes in major urban communities in the United States. With a growing distribution of wealth as evidenced in the creative arts, the well-paid artists, the American Indian casinos, and the African American and Latino sport figures, these segments will, in the long run, represent the new community of monies with which the communities of color can achieve public access and influence public policy.

Bibliography

Annals of America: Discovering a New World (1493-1754). Vol. 1. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britanica, Inc. 1968.

Avila, Alex. Hispanic. March 10, 1997.

Black, Eric. "President Carried Fundraising to New Level. Minneapolis Star Tribune. March 9, 1997.

Cassirer, Ernest. Cassirer: The Myth of the State. Charles W. Hendel, ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963.

Hughes, Kenneth Jams. Signs of Literature: Language, Ideology and the Literary Text. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1986.

Konetezke, Richard. Documentos para la Historia Social de Hispanoamerica (Documents for the Social History of Hispanic America). Vols. I, II, III. Madrid, 1958.

Manuscript. "Relacion Verdadera qe el pe predicat\dor fr. Fran[cis]co Perez Guarta…" Santa Fe, New Mexico inquisition manuscript in the Archivo General de la Nacion, Mexico City, 1961.

Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present. New York. 1995.