COVER STORY : The Light of Day : A Spanish Literacy Programs are Brightening the Lives of Latino Immigrants, Teaching them to be Moe Politically Aware as they Learn to Read and Write

AT A KITCHEN TABLE IN HER SMALL WESTLAKE APARTMENT, Natividad Barrera pens the day’s lesson: “Housing and health are a right,” she writes in Spanish, moving slowly from one letter to the next, as sunlight filters through a window of the run-down flat.

Just as the sun brightens the dank room, so too has learning to read and write illuminated Barrera’s life. Until a year ago, the 40-year-old Guatemalan immigrant was illiterate in her native Spanish.

Unable to write her name or read street signs, Barrera says she lived in virtual darkness. But her life changed after she enrolled in one of a handful of Spanish literacy programs for Latino immigrants in Central Los Angeles. She now reads and writes in Spanish at about the second-grade level and is enrolled in English as a Second Language classes.

For the most part, the literacy programs are run by immigrants themselves. Many of them were activists in Central America or Mexico who use techniques popularized in Latin American literacy campaigns. Stressing themes such as gangs, poverty and housing, the classes not only teach students to read and write, but also to become politically aware of issues facing their communities.

“We try to get them to realize that certain things are not acceptable,” said Marcos Cajina, executive director of the Centro Latino de Educacion Popular, a Temple-Beaudry nonprofit organization that has been teaching Spanish literacy classes since 1991. “Changes do not happen overnight, but students begin to question issues and think critically.”

Instructors say the literacy classes are the first step in providing immigrants with basic grammar skills needed to eventually read and write in English. They say the programs offer a glimmer of hope in an otherwise dismal situation.

A major federal study released in September concluded that nearly half of American adults are “at risk” of being left behind in the information age because they possess the barest reading and mathematics skills. The study’s authors said one reason for the bleak findings is the large number of Latino immigrants who are not proficient in English.

Some educators criticize the Spanish literacy programs for setting students back in their efforts to learn English. Regardless of their age, the critics say, students should be immediately immersed in English language classes.

“There is no rhyme or reason why we can’t teach in English,” said Gloria Matta Tuchman, an outspoken proponent of English-immersion education and president of the Tustin Unified school board in Orange County.

But Spanish literacy advocates disagree.

“You just can’t throw adults who have been illiterate for 20 or 30 years into a classroom and expect them to learn English,” said Raul Anorve, a linguist with California Literacy Inc., a statewide nonprofit organization that has funded and set up reading programs for more than 50 years. “If you learn to read in your native language first, you then transfer the skills you acquire into a second language.”

Though no hard numbers exist, literacy experts estimate that thousands of Latino immigrants in Central Los Angeles are unable to read or write not only in English, but also in Spanish. Statewide, a 1989 survey of 5,000 Latino immigrants found that they had completed an average of 6.5 years of school in their native countries. The survey was conducted for the California Department of Education to assess skill levels of Latinos who qualified for citizenship under the 1986 federal amnesty program.

In El Salvador and Guatemala, experts say, more than two-thirds of the residents are illiterate, having grown up in the countryside where work is valued over schooling or where few opportunities exist for those who want to learn. Many of those campesinos , or countryside workers, moved to Los Angeles during the immigration wave of the late 1970s and ‘80s.

Among them was Barrera.

One of eight children--four of whom died of childhood diseases--Barrera was relegated to domestic work as a child and teen-ager. Beginning at age 6, she awoke daily at 3 a.m. to grind cornmeal and make tortillas for her dad and two older brothers, who worked the cotton and coffee fields. Other chores, such as cleaning the family’s dilapidated shack, cooking dinner and hauling water from a nearby well, would last into the evening, she said.

“My life has always been one of work,” Barrera said, pointing to a thick scar across her neck from the yoke she wore to carry the buckets of water.

Barrera, who came to Los Angeles in 1976 and now makes ends meet by cleaning homes, said she wanted to go to school as a child, but her father refused to send her. “He said, ‘You just want to learn to write letters to your boyfriends,’ ” Barrera recalled.

A member of a storefront evangelical church in Echo Park, Barrera is now able to read her Bible during services. Before, she said, she just stared blankly at the pages.

“I read it for my heart and soul,” said Barrera, whose goal is to improve her Spanish reading capability and eventually become proficient in English.

The study released in September by the U.S. Department of Education found that Latino immigrants scored in the lowest of five levels that tested reading comprehension in English and math skills. The 26,000 test recipients were required to read newspaper articles and brochures, balance checkbooks and calculate prices on lunch menus.

Though it is not surprising that immigrants with limited English skills would score poorly, the results show that a major segment of American society is falling behind in an increasingly technological world economy, said Irwin Kirsch of the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, N.J., which conducted the test. The New Jersey firm also administers college placement exams.

“We’re creating two societies--those who can do, and those who can’t,” said Kirsch, director of the ETS learning and assessment group.

And among those who will have the most difficulty adapting in the changing society, experts say, are immigrants who cannot read or write in their own languages, let alone English.

To help bridge the gap in education in Central Los Angeles’ immigrant community, about half a dozen Spanish literacy organizations have sprouted up in the past several years. Most of them have developed their own primers and rely on “popular education” methodology, which has its roots in the theories of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, perhaps best known in the United States for his seminal book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.”

Popular education instructors teach students to read and write with words that are relevant to their daily experiences. For example, instead of using phrases such as “See Spot run,” students write sentences using words such as poverty, housing and racism.

The idea, instructors say, is to prompt discussion on those issues affecting their lives and what they can do to improve their communities. The technique has been widely used in Cuba, Brazil and Nicaragua, among other Latin American countries, to educate and politicize large peasant populations.

“Education has to be tied into the social, political and economic reality in which the students live,” Anorve said.

But critics say “popular education” is steeped in leftist doctrine.

“It is a very radical agenda,” said Sally Peterson, director of Learning English Advocates Drive, an organization that has spoken out against bilingual education. “Many of the instructors have an ax to grind and lose sight of their teaching goals.”

Though the Central Los Angeles literacy organizations are few compared to the need, they have changed the lives of some residents.

For Paula Palma, a Guatemalan immigrant, learning to read also meant learning that she had a right to be paid a minimum wage. The former garment worker said she earned three cents for every blouse she sewed, making about $40 for two weeks of full-time work. Palma said she did not know about minimum-wage laws until they were discussed in her literacy class at the Temple-Beaudry nonprofit organization.

“I learned that if we work, we have to get the proper pay,” said Palma, now a cafeteria cook at 9th Street Elementary School in Downtown. “Now, if something is not right, I speak out.”

She is one of about 75 students who have attended the free classes at the Centro Latino de Educacion Popular, which was founded by Cajina in 1991. A literacy teacher in Nicaragua, Cajina realized the need for similar programs here while working for a Downtown social service agency. During the course of helping garment workers file court grievances seeking back wages, he discovered that many could neither read nor write.

The organization has two paid staff members and several volunteers. It has received about $110,000 in grants from the Liberty Hill Foundation and Cal Literacy Inc., among other groups and corporations. Liberty Hill and Cal Literacy also fund other area literacy organizations, including the Centro de Educacion Popular de Este Los Angeles in Boyle Heights and the Proyecto Educativo Comunitario in South-Central.

The South-Central organization has taught 40 students to read and write since it started in late 1992. The organization, which offers free classes, was founded by Roberto Bustillo, a former law student and human rights activist in El Salvador.

On a recent evening, at St. Columbkille Catholic Church at 64th and Main streets, six students learned how to pronounce different sounds created by vowels and consonants.

“Bla-ble-blo-blu,” Bustillo said, pointing to the letters written on a chalkboard. The students repeated: “Bla-ble-blo-blu.”

“What is the name of the material we use to build houses?” Bustillo asked in Spanish.

After several wrong answers, student Victoriano Melendez offered the correct response: bloque , which means block in Spanish.

A native of El Salvador, Melendez grew up in the countryside and worked in the coffee, cotton and bean fields since he was 7 years old. The 38-year-old South-Central resident emigrated to the United States in 1977 and works at a garment factory near Athens County Park.

“I don’t know how I lived all these years in ignorance, not knowing anything,” Melendez said. “It was like I was blind.”

Melendez said he feels bad because he was unable to read bedtime stories to his daughter when she was little. He says she is now 21, attending Cal State Fresno and considering applying to law school.

“On the other hand, I gave her all the support she needed,” he said. “And I taught her the most important thing: Have respect for herself and others.”

Jorge Ramirez, who is taking advanced classes offered by the South-Central organization, sums up the feeling of many who are learning to read and write. “It is beautiful to be able to know what is happening in the world,” said the 43-year-old Mexican immigrant. “To read a book, read a map or look at the newspaper is a wonderful feeling.”

On the Cover

Cuban immigrant Ana Hatch, 65, takes part in a literacy class at Malabar Library in Boyle Heights. Several literacy groups are reaching out to illiterate Latino immigrants by teaching them to read and write in Spanish.

“Learning to read opens up a whole new world for these students,” said Gaspar Verdugo, executive director of the Centro de Educacion Popular de Este Los Angeles, which offers the free classes in Boyle Heights for Hatch and other Eastside residents. The Spanish literacy organization is one of a handful that have sprouted up during the past several years to bridge the gap in education in the area’s immigrant community.

* IMPROVING LITERACY: Roberto Bustillo, the director of Proyecto Educativo Comunitario, gave up his dream of becoming a lawyer to teach Spanish language skills to Latino immigrants. Page 23