The law went into effect last year, and it essentially ruled that the Mexican-American studies program offered in the Tucson public school system was divisive and should be scrapped. At the end of the first semester without the classes, hard feelings still linger.
For eight years, until this past January, Lorenzo Lopez taught Mexican-American studies at Cholla High in Tucson, the very school from which he graduated in 1992.
After high school, Lopez spent a couple years working odd jobs as a miner and a factor worker; anything to pay the bills. But then he enrolled in college to get ahead and he was doing alright, but it was one class — a course in Chicano literature — that changed everything.
