Pre-NAFTA roles

ENJOYED your story on Eva Longoria [“A Post-NAFTA Star,” May 28].

You are exactly right in stating that many Latinos are acculturating to present-day America. However, many Mexican American students at Colton High School in the 1950s and 1960s were doing this many years before Eva even was born. Many of us were born in California to Mexican American parents and going to local high schools where we had no choice but to acculturate. I suppose the schools had the intent for us to assimilate. Our parents were smart enough to tell us to speak English and Spanish and never leave our Mexican American heritage. Thank God we followed their wise counsel.

As a result of that acculturation, some of us became bilingual and bicultural. Some of us were able to see the benefits of a good education and the future it had for us. We had many casualties because not a whole lot of our friends had the foresight to peek into the future of their adult lives. Consequently, an educational diploma from high school was all that many of the Mexican American students were able to achieve, despite the potential that they had to attend community college. Only they know their own story.

DANNY CARRASCO

Highland