In June, more than 40 years after the Los Angeles Unified School District tried to fire Sal Castro for his leadership of the 1968 Chicana/o Blowouts, it came full circle and named a middle school after him. As a young teacher, Castro was a key organizer of the 1968 student walkouts (called “blowouts” by the youth), when as many as 40,000 Chicana/o students marched out of their schools to demand bilingual and bicultural education, more Mexican American teachers and administrators, relevant curriculum, accurate textbooks, and an end to the tracking that steered Mexican American students into vocational classes.
Branded a dangerous agitator by television news commentators and charged with a series of felonies, Castro was fired by the school district. The community surged to his defense; eventually the charges were dropped and he was rehired. Through his work with the Chicano Youth Leadership Conference, Castro has nurtured generations of students. Since 1963, more than 5,000 students have participated in the conference.
In June 2010, Sal Castro sat down with Gilda L. Ochoa to talk about his passion for educational justice.
Gilda Ochoa: As a way to learn more about the factors shaping your perspective and work, can you begin by sharing a bit about your own family history and schooling?
Sal Castro: My parents came up here during the Mexican Revolution and met in Los Angeles. I guess they fell in love, got married, and I was born. When I was 2½–3, the height of the Depression hit; my old man got deported. They went to his place of work at the bakery—“Out you go.” And he was a legal resident. My mother was at home. If she had been at work at the laundry, hell, they would have taken her. He got sent back to Mexico, so then that started the unique process of my education in that we kept going back every summer because my mother had to keep her papers.