Conservative book ban activists target Rio Grande Valley school districts

Harlingen pastor Luis Cabrera addressing the Brownsville school board earlier this month. Courtesy photo.

At 3:27 p.m. last Friday, McAllen ISD Superintendent René Gutiérrez and then-Board President Debbie Crane Aliseda received a not-so-subtly threatening email with a demand: purge your schools’ libraries of 676 books or else.

The threat was delivered by local representatives of Citizens Defending Freedom and the Remnant Alliance, associated conservative advocacy groups founded outside of the Rio Grande Valley that have made waves elsewhere across Texas and the nation by successfully forcing school districts to ban books.

Those group’s efforts locally gained ground in Cameron County earlier this month under the leadership of Luis Cabrera, the pastor of City Church in Harlingen.

“It’s time to hold the ISDs responsible and it’s time to hold them accountable, because we are trusting them to educate our children, not indoctrinate them with pornography,” he told the Progress Times Monday.

The list of 676 books Cabrera’s group sent to McAllen ISD and other Valley districts includes a suggested age range for readers that appears to be based on the recommendation of a book rating website that may have ties to another conservative advocacy group.

Most of the books seem to have made their way onto the list because they include race, drugs or sex. Sex seems to be the most prevalent theme.

Many of the books have already made headlines around the nation for being banned, like “Push,” which deals with sexual abuse.

Also included are works by fairly well established literary icons like Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Oscar Wilde, Toni Morrison, Vladimir Nabokov, Sylvia Plath, Kurt Vonnegut and Sandra Cisneros.

Cisneros couldn’t Wednesday quite puzzle out why somebody felt like “The House on Mango Street” needed to be ripped from the shelves of high school libraries, though she’d like to find out and said she’d be willing to come to town to do so.

“I was an educator, so the last thing I want to do is cause any offense or harm anyone — certainly not students,” she said. “And I’m willing to get on a plane and meet with whomever I have to meet.”

Cabrera said he doesn’t see how Cisneros’ classic could contribute to his child becoming a “productive citizen in society.”

“That book contains violence involving child abuse and domestic violence and sexual assault,” he said. “How is that educational for a middle or high schooler?”

It’s not clear whether Cabrera’s read Cisneros’ book; he said it takes 10 to 15 minutes to research a book and decide whether it should be removed from a school library— which adds up when there’s almost 700 you want banned from school libraries.

“The House on Mango Street” is rated as being appropriate for an adult on Cabrera’s list, although he explained to the Progress Times Monday that it doesn’t matter what audience the list describes a book as being appropriate for.

He wants the whole list out of local schools altogether, permanently.

“The idea was to get those books pulled. Removed completely,” Cabrera said. “That’s the idea behind us doing everything that we’re doing. There’s no point of doing all of this if those books remain on the shelves. If they remain on the shelves, then we come in with our lawyers and pursue legal action against them.”

That threat isn’t necessarily an idle one. Citizens Defending Freedom has followed through with litigation over books it feels should be banned elsewhere in the nation.

The tactics that Cabrera and his group use don’t start with lawyers though. Those tactics start with demanding an audience with district leadership and threatening to cause a ruckus if one isn’t granted quickly.

The email McAllen ISD received from Remnant Alliance representative Martha Garza-Johnson last Friday capitalizes on concessions Cabrera’s group has obtained in Cameron County so far.

That email includes the list of “awful” books the group wants banned from school libraries and claims that Brownsville ISD Superintendent Jesus Chavez and Harlingen CISD Superintendent J.A. Gonzalez are “diligently working to remove” them because they agree they “have no place in the hands of our children because they are filthy and evil.”

The email says the group didn’t even have to reach out to Weslaco ISD. It says that district contacted the activists proactively to avoid activists showing up at a board meeting.

According to Cabrera, McAllen ISD had a meeting scheduled with him Wednesday but canceled. It’s not clear if they’ll reschedule.

What if they don’t? Then things get downright nasty.

On May 7, Cabrera and 10 supporters showed up at Brownsville’s school board meeting to read expletive-ridden passages from books they said the district has in its libraries during public comment.

It got thoroughly out of hand.

There was shouting. People quoted the Bible and George Washington in between readings of sexually explicit scenes that the school district’s attorney tried — in vain — to tell them they weren’t allowed to read.

Bonnie Wallace of Llano, Texas, whose efforts at getting books banned in her hometown resulted in litigation and national media attention, showed up.

“It’s already off!” Wallace yelled at the board after someone called for her microphone to be cut off. “I don’t need a mic because God gives me power!”

Cabrera says he didn’t even preface the display with any demands for Brownsville ISD.

It didn’t matter. The district gave him an audience after the meeting anyway.

Cabrera also showed up for the Harlingen school board’s May 14 meeting, the video of which is conspicuously absent from the district’s YoutTube page.

In a video of the meeting Cabrera posted on his Facebook page, he told the Harlingen board books in the district’s libraries belong at Pokey’s Planet, a well known Valley purveyor of sex toys.

Harlingen’s superintendent met with him too.

Harlingen CISD Superintendent J.A. Gonzalez, Deputy Superintendent Veronica Kortan and pastor Luis Cabrera posing for a picture. Cabrera wants Rio Grande Valley school districts to ban a list of 676 books from their libraries. Courtesy photo.

Cabrera claims Brownsville and Harlingen agreed to remove any of the 676 books on his list that the schools found in their libraries.

Superintendent Chavez from Brownsville told the Progress Times that he agreed to remove five books from the district after meeting with the activists, who also presented him with a shortlist of books they oppose.

“From my perspective, yes, some of the books I would not want in our schools,” Chavez said.

Brownsville agreed to remove “Jay’s Gay Agenda,” “It’s Perfectly Normal,” “Juliet Takes a Breath,” “Flamer” and “The Big Question Book of Sex and Consent.”

Chavez said those books likely would have been weeded out through the district’s normal review processes.

Cabrera says Harlingen also agreed to remove some books immediately, though that district declined to comment.

Weslaco ISD’s board president, Jacky Sustaita says she has talked to Cabrera but denied doing so to avoid him showing up at public comment. She says the district’s reviewing Cabrera’s list of books to see if they’re compliant with state law.

Despite Cabrera’s group gaining some ground, it’s not clear how likely those districts are to take significant action on his longlist of books.

Chavez didn’t indicate that his district would take any immediate action on that list other than reviewing them along with the rest of its collection.

“I mean, this is ongoing work,” he said. “So no, I’m not prepared to say that we’ve taken out 676 books. The five books that they were opposed to, yes, those books are no longer in our collection. We felt that we needed to take immediate action.

Chavez also said he doesn’t approve of the group’s tactics but he’s still open to their feedback.

He said he doesn’t endorse the group, despite posing for a picture with them that the activists are sending to other districts.

Chavez said he made an effort to make that distinction with area superintendents this week.

Hidalgo County school districts may soon face the same situation Chavez dealt with earlier this month.

It’s not clear what McAllen ISD’s going to do about Cabrera, but it’s hardly alone.

Cabrera says he means to pressure every large district in the county. Edinburg, La Joya and Sharyland school districts all say they’ve heard from his group so far.

Other districts didn’t respond to requests for comment or said they weren’t sure if they’d gotten the email.

What’s abundantly clear is that Cabrera’s approach leans more towards threats and bravado than conversation.

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He stopped answering questions for this story after the Progress Times told him his efforts to have books removed from school libraries would be described as an attempt to have them banned from those libraries.

Cabrera dislikes the term “ban” because he feels like it implies that he’s attempting to have the books on his list prohibited society-wide, which he says isn’t the goal. He couldn’t explain how his group’s demands don’t constitute a ban for books in school libraries.

After Cabrera stopped answering questions on the phone, he sent the Progress Times a lengthy statement reacting to this story — which had neither been written nor published at the time — and threatened to release it if the Progress Times described him as attempting to ban books in school libraries.

“The portrayal of my efforts as a blanket attempt to ban books is misleading and unfair,” part of the statement said. “It is easier to cast me as an opponent of free expression rather than engage in a nuanced discussion about age-appropriate material. Protecting children from exposure to harmful content is a matter of safeguarding their well-being and development, which aligns with the moral compass of any conscientious adult.”

Cisneros, the author, is more open to conversation. She says she really stands by her offer to book a plane ticket on her own dime, fly to the Valley and meet with the activists for an open discussion about her book and their efforts. The offer stands for local school districts considering Cabrera’s demands as well.

“I know that the best way to resolve conflict is to talk,” Cisneros said. “So I’d be very happy to come and listen very deeply to what he has to say about banning not only my book, but all the books.”

Cisneros, a Chicago native, spent a large chunk of her life living in San Antonio and has close ties to South Texas. She visits the Valley regularly for speaking engagements.

What’s it feel like when someone wants to ban the book you wrote from school libraries in a community you’re attached to?

“To ban the book, I think, is a frightening thing,” Cisneros said. “To call them awful and evil is offensive — I felt like someone punched me in the gut when I read that letter, when they said they were awful and evil. You know, it was the farthest thing from my heart when I wrote this. I wrote this with puro amor, mi amor puro.”

Cisneros is skeptical that Cabrera’s group has actually read her book. She’s skeptical that the actual content of many books on their list is really the point of the push.

“I think it’s about power and control. I’m just guessing, I don’t know — I haven’t met any of the individuals — but I really think it’s about power and control,” she said.

Cabrera’s group has certainly found a degree of influence in a fairly short time: Brownsville ISD is the largest traditional school district in the Valley, and Cabrera has access to its superintendent now.

Ironically, despite the apparent divide between Cabrera and Cisneros, they likely have some common ground.

Cisneros is religious herself. She thinks there’s value in young people reading about controversial topics, an opinion Cabrera likely wouldn’t agree with, but she doesn’t disagree that there’s books that aren’t appropriate for all ages.

“I didn’t write the book for little ones,” Cisneros said about her book Cabrera wants removed. “I wrote it for high school students. I didn’t write it for middle school or little, younger ones.”

It’s not clear whether any Valley districts will take Cisneros up on her offer to come to town and talk about literature.

With controversy afoot, it seems bound to serve as a lightning rod for some sort of spectacle.

Cabrera, though, doesn’t seem likely to take her up on the offer.

“I’m done speaking,” he said after the Progress Times texted him about it. “Bless you!”

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