CHIC 4306 – Colonias on the U.S.-Mexico Border
THIS IS A COMMON SYLLABUS FOR ALL SECTIONS OF CHIC 4306
Instructor:
E-mail:
Telephone:
Office:
Office hours:
Course Organization
a)BEING THERE: Because it takes place over a short period of time, and because much of
what is taught is not published, attendance is VERY important. If you cannot make a class, let the instructor know before-hand and arrange to have someone gather notes for you. I always take note of who is not present.
b)Journals: By means of writing about what we have learned, we can reflect and grow intellectually. This is not the place for class notes, but rather your reflections on what is going on in the class and inside your own mind in response to it. We will discuss the journals in class…but remember, we will be reading what you write so make it count!
c)Reading: we have reading assignments that will make much more sense if done on time. If we see evidence of people falling behind, there are always pop quizzes available to us to increase motivation.
d)Discussion: Each of you bring unique abilities and knowledge and perspectives to the class, and we expect you to bring them to the class – part of which will be made up of discussions, large and small. Your verbal contribution to the class is part of your grade.
e)Field work: Organized visits to Colonias and individual assignments are required on Friday afternoons and/or Saturdays.
Learning Outcomes
(Attainment of learning outcomes is required at a minimum rate of 70%)
The student will complete examinations of the extant literature on Colonias on the border via assigned readings and WEB site information on their legal, social, educational, healthand human service dimensions.
The student will identify thegeneral socioeconomic andinfrastructure conditions of Coloniasin the greater El Paso by touring under the direct supervisionof the instructor and writinga journal about thevisits tofive settlements.
The student will develop a service utilization profile (Report) of a projector communitycenter designed to address a specific or integrated set of needs in Colonias by interviewing project/center personnel and service recipients.
The student will develop a mini case study of a Colonia family that includes its origin, arrival history, major challenges and successes as Colonia dwellers.
The student will interview three educators at the elementary and/or secondary level to include a teacher, a counselor and a member of the staff, on their perceived academic attainment of Colonia students and strategies designed to promote their academic success.
Students will attend, at the discretion of the instructor, conferences or lectures by academics, governmentofficials and service providers on Colonias topic, on which a one-page summary of the presentation will be submitted for extra-credit.
Course Description
1)Colonias. This is a course about something rather new in the trajectory of settlements along the US-Mexico border, or anywhere in the United States, a form of housing production and development outside of the rules of regulation and code. Colonias are generally lacking in most aspects of basic infrastructure, and the household of residents that live there are low income to very low income, with high amounts of underemployment and high incidences of diseases and social problems characteristic of poor minority/immigrant populations elsewhere in Texas. The difference is that these people have taken the risks of an inferior services and shady contracts for the promise of land ownership and home ownership. They bet collectively on the chance for autonomy from rent bondage, by resource pooling in families. With the availability of low monthly payment lots, over a half million of them have been able to scrape together functional homes. From the starting point of settling, how the lot development progresses is a result of the economic success of the household, and the success of the colonia is based on a preponderance of the successful household. The settlement appears more akin to those seen in low end housing in Mexico and Latin America generally, on the edges of cities. These largely self-built barrios in Mexico were often formed by means of collective invasion by poor homeless people. In the US this is not so; every underserved lot has been sold on a 15-30 year “contract for sale” and as a result, made colonia developers rich, ironically, by selling near worthless land to the impoverished.
In this and many other ways, colonias are truly a unique form of social and physical arrangements, something on a Third World economic refugee camp in the affluent US. The plight of the colonias is not even known about by most of the nation’s citizenry, and only recently, this last decade, have they really been discovered and addressed as a problem by the state of Texas. In the last few years there has been a huge influx of resources to regularize the colonias (water systems, sewerage, road paving) with State and Federal tax dollars, along with a cascade of legislation to attempt to correct the regulation problem, by requiring the infrastructure the developers failed to provide in the past, in essence making the developers sell the land with services. This legislative and infrastructure activism in the colonias has a mixed review to date, as this course will demonstrate. Colonias, in addition to their basic problems, now have the problem of being used in the politics of the border, in what I call “disasterization.” Filled with assumptions about colonias as slums, outsiders have championed them for their own purposes, especially development and aid dollars in the areas of public water, health, environment and housing. Moreover, some claim that the largest beneficiaries of putting in infrastructure are often the ones most to blame for the colonia problems in the first place. These are the kinds of complexities and controversies and social dimension of the colonia situation in Texas (and New Mexico) that will be discussed in this current and relevantly focused class. All the ways in which colonias have been “imagined” as well as the perspective they themselves give, will be covered in this course, placing them in the political economy, the legal issues, the social structure and the borderlands regional, as well as the global contexts. Identity in colonias will be examined in relation to Chicano and other Latino identity movements and the “models” for acculturative integration into the US-Mexico borderlands. Finally, we will look at how this relates to issues of education, formal and informal.
2)This course is about Anthropology, about a fresh way of looking at people and cultural difference. It is also about how to translate anthropological understandings of people and ethnographic methodology into field research. Part of the course involves going into the colonias and “hanging out” --- learning not jut from the instructor but from the people themselves who live in, work with, and ARE the colonias. So this course is about how to understand people from a perspective that blends science with humanism, classroom with field experience, facts with understandings that come from interaction.
3)This course is about Education, how to learn, how to teach to diverse learners, how to create excitement in the subject matter taught, how to use performance as a basis of teaching. Much of this subject will be indirectly referenced, by ways of example, not by way of direct instruction. However, be aware that the instructional style is part of the subject matter being taught.
4)This course is also about YOU. Every step into the world of “Otherness,” into another reality other than the one we live in, is also a step inside ourselves, serving to raise questions about how we see the world and how it compares with the ways of others we Are learning about. It also asks us to be more open-minded, more willing to see multiple perspectives at the same time, event if they do not seem to agree, pushes us away from “either/or” kinds of thinking and towards “and/with” ways of seeing, and invites us to “walk a mile in the moccasins” of people not exactly like ourselves before we make judgments about them.
Your first assignment, to be typed and handed in for tomorrow: Your life history, who you are, your ancestry, your culture, education and experience as a youth, your current social and class situation, all that has made you who you are, and your dreams and aspirations for the future. One more thing to answer: if you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Grading Criteria
90-100 = A
80-89 = B
70-79 = C
60-69 = D
59 or below = F
Academic Dishonesty
Academic dishonesty is prohibited and is considered a violation of the UTEP Handbook of Operating Procedures (HOP). It includes, but is not limited to, cheating, plagiarism, and collusion. Cheating may involve copying from or providing information to another student, possessing unauthorized materials during a test, or falsifying research data on laboratory reports. Plagiarism occurs when someone intentionally or knowingly represents the words or ideas of another person's as ones' own. And, collusion involves collaborating with another person to commit any academically dishonest act. Any act of academic dishonesty attempted by a UTEP student is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Violations will be taken seriously and will be referred to the Dean of Students Office for possible disciplinary action. Students may be suspended or expelled from UTEP for such actions.Please consult the Handbook of Operating Procedures at policy on academic dishonesty. You may alsoconsult withtheAssistant Dean of Students at theStudent UnionBuilding West, Room 102,or by calling 747-5648.
Students with Disabilities
If you have or believe you have a disability, you may wish to self-identify. You can do so by providing documentation to the Office of Disabled Student Services located inthe Student UnionBuilding East, Room 203 by phone 747-4148 or e-mail you have a conditionthat may affect your ability to exit safely from the premises in an emergency orthat may cause an emergency during class, you are encouraged to discuss this in confidence with the instructor and/or the director of Disabled Student Services.
ATTENTION GRADUATE STUDENTS: In order to obtain graduate credit for this course, you must satisfactorily complete a term paper or conduct researchon a topic,with parameters and editorial style approved beforehand by the course instructor.
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