2 pm to 4 pm

Join Rebecca Blum Martinez, professor of bilingual and ESL education in the College of Education at the University of New Mexico, for a talk on the history and present state of bilingual education in New Mexico.

Blum Martinez has worked with and advocated for bilingual students and their families in New Mexico since 1975. Bilingual education has been a contentious educational reform since its inception in the late 1960s. New Mexico, in 1969, was one of the first states to embrace Spanish/English bilingual education. The struggle for Spanish language rights has been a constant preoccupation in the state since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848. The talk will highlight the many initiatives undertaken in public education in New Mexico, beginning in the 1960s, to ensure children’s linguistic rights.

The La Canoa Legacy Series features talks by Hispanic/Latino academic and community researchers with long-standing and distinguished records of research and teaching about New Mexico and the region. Like la canoa—referring in New Mexican Spanish to several utilitarian objects used to receive and transport people and resources and thus provide a service to the community—these talks are meant to serve the community by presenting new or overlooked information about our region to interested audiences. We want them to transport us to new understandings of our region and its rich cultural and historical inheritance, and to move the conversation back and forth in rich dialogue between presenters and audience members.
Free public event