El Curso de la Raza: The Education of Aurelio Manuel Montemayor by Thomas Ray Garcia and Aurelio Manuel Montemayor (review)

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• El Curso de la Raza: The Education of Aurelio Manuel Montemayor by Thomas Ray Garcia and Aurelio Manuel Montemayor
• Gonzalo Guzmán

El Curso de la Raza: The Education of Aurelio Manuel Montemayor. By Thomas Ray Garcia and Aurelio Manuel Montemayor. ( College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2023. Pp. 208. Illustrations, appendix, notes, index.)

El Curso de la Raza: The Education of Aurelio Manuel Montemayor, coauthored by educators Aurelio Manuel Montemayor and Thomas Ray Garcia, details the educational experiences and political awakening of Montemayor, a South Texan educator and community activist. While it is a memoir, the book engages in deep discussion with historical documentation and secondary literature on the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement (El Movimiento) in Texas. The book chronicles Montemayor's contributions to Mexican-American/Chicano civil rights progress in South Texas that included a community political engagement course (El Curso De La Raza) and co-founding one of the earliest known Mexican-American-centered colleges in the United States, Colegio Jacinto Treviño. El Curso is not only an autobiography highlighting the development of Montemayor's critical consciousness (conscientización) but offers an intimate reflection on the impact of El Movimiento in Texas and the American Southwest during the 1960s and 1970s.

In the prologue, Montemayor argues that the purpose of his memoir is to unpack the development of his conscientización and to "infuse a personal dimension into an otherwise historical insight into the past" (p. xxli). The book succeeds on all fronts. Divided into nine chapters and an appendix of historical documents from Montemayor's career, El Curso offers insights into the author's identity as a son of the Texas-Mexican borderlands (fronterizo) whose identity was always in flux but always committed to his community.

Chapters 1–4 focus on the early development of Montemayor's political consciousness and exposure to community activism before 1968. Here, Montemayor's identity as a fronterizo shines as the author describes his identity negotiations while attending a private Catholic school, experiences as a student at St. Edward's University in Austin, and return to South Texas to be a high school teacher in San Felipe Independent School District. These chapters capture the growth of Montemayor's liberatory pedagogy that he would try to implement as a high school teacher and would later expand into a larger community activism [End Page 112] drive. Chapter 3 ("The Cursillo de Cristiandad") is a standout chapter because it speaks to the political and identity awakening of Montemayor that would later define his educational and political philosophy of liberation. This awakening would change the course of his educational and community activist career forever. As Montemayor writes, "If college freed me, the Cursillo remade me" (p.22).

Chapters 5–9 document the expansion of Montemayor's identity and notions of liberatory pedagogy into the larger Mexican-American community. These five chapters reveal his growing contribution to the El Movimiento in Texas from 1968 to 1975 after leaving teaching. In many ways, this section of the book shows the path that Montemayor took to reconcile pedagogy and activism. His journey towards this reconciliation included his organizing work with Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), co-creating a community organization education course (El Curso de la Raza), and ultimately being part of the creation of the Mexican-American-centered college, Colegio Jacinto Treviño. Ultimately, this path led to the end of El Curso in 1975, and Montemayor gives a very personal and assessment of many obstacles he faced in his educational activism.

Montemayor's desire to facilitate community activism and liberation in the South Texas borderlands becomes clear in this book, but the impact of federal Great Society programs in the region is also discussed. Chapter 8 ("The Curso de la Raza") captures Montemayor's main goal of his memoir and serves as the central example of the ways he reconciled being a pedagogue and a community organizer. Reflecting on the creation of El Curso, he writes, "The Curso became an ideal vehicle for reviving pride in oneself and the community, moving past social hurts and slights toward action, and transforming institutionalized exclusion and bigotry…. I still operate from the knowledge...