Phoenix - Tony Diaz, aka “El Librotraficante” (or book smuggler) is arriving in Tucson on Friday with a truckload of Mexican-American books that were effectively banned from the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) to distribute to a network of “underground libraries.”
The caravan, which started in Houston on March 12, aims to draw attention to a state law in Arizona banning ethnic studies that was used by politicians to shut down a Tucson Mexican-American Studies Program and literally box its books away.
“Every great movement is sparked by outrage at a deep cultural offense,” said Diaz, founder of Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say, a group that promotes Latino authors and culture. “Latinos are not the sleeping giant; we’re the working giant. When any state in this nation passes an anti-Latino law they’ll know we’ll respond together,” he said.
Authors and publishers have joined the cause by donating and re-printing books: Wings Press, for example, reprinted one of the banned books, “Curandera” by Carmen Tafolla, and donated 100 copies to take on the road to Tucson, said Diaz.
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“Of course this banning is raw, ugly racism. But may I suggest that it’s good it’s out in the open and publicly displayed? And with this we teach metaphor: our literature has always been put away, carted to storage. What’s new is that books got out, to ambitious, bright young people no less, and now have been confiscated. Doesn’t that sort of describe the Mexican American experience for the last 200 years? We’re not treated as if we’re from here, that we have our history here, that our land and history is part of the country’s land and history.”
