Tejas

Tejas archive

In spring 1989, students got together to form a newspaper and approached journalism professor Mercedes de Uriarte to create Tejas in an effort to provide a journalistic avenue for the Mexican-American, Hispanic, Latino, and Chicano students. Tejas was the quarterly publication of J352/MAS379: Latino Community News, a course taken for credit in journalism, Mexican American Studies and Latin American Studies. Tejas was comprised of active and broadly diverse members, and the paper acted as an important communication tool between various student groups and within the greater community. Tejas constantly ranged politically from a progressive/radical viewpoint to a fairly moderate one, going as far as praising the Protestant work ethic of John Hall, an Ann Richards appointee as top environmental commissioner in the state who arguably did more to irreparably harm the environment than the Republicans who followed. However, the politics of the newspaper mattered less than publishing a newspaper that acted as a voice for so many people of color at UT and around Austin often overlooked by other media outlets, including other alternative student publications.

How did UT attack Tejas?

For a complete article, see 'Tejas': The Attack on Diverse Press, By Scott Henson and Tom Philpott, Polemicist, September 1990, page 5.

From the Robert Ovetz dissertation: "Soon after it published a scathing cover article - "Rattle of a Very Curious Dean" - in its May 1990 issue on psychology professor and TAS president Joe Horn, indicating his race based theories of intelligence and calling for him to resign as associate dean of Liberal Arts, the Chicana/o student newspaper Tejas came under heavy fire..."

From July 1990 Polemicist Chastisements: "Dean Jeffrey announced on Friday June 22 that as long as Tejas receives UT funding, it can no longer distribute outside the College of Communications complex...Dean Jeffrey initially backed Tejas in the dispute, telling The Daily Texan on June 4 that 'I don't think Tejas is in violation of that law at all.'

"By June 7, however, his attitude toward the magazine had hardened drastically. Discussing a UT policy that any publication receiving UT funding must fall under UT control, he told The Texan that 'Without this policy, any professor on campus with a political interest could gather students, offer them an independent study course and produce a paper expressing his views ... Obviously, we can't have 100 papers like that on campus without any University control.'"

What Jeffrey overlooked, though, was that students approached a professor for help, not vice-versa; additionally, pursuant to academic freedom, the University should never seek to sanction student thought. Regardless, in the end, state Senator Gonzalo Barrientos lead other lawmakers in passing a resolution stating that UT ought to support Tejano student newspapers, so administrators backed off. Tejas was required to raise private money to able to distribute outside of the College of Communication, and it survived seven good years, from spring 1989 until spring 1996.

Original copies provided by the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas. Scanned and converted into HTML code by UT Watch.
The full issues require a PDF writer, such as Foxit Reader or Adobe Acrobat.