The public school administrators in Tucson have taken censorship to new heights.

First, they banned Mexican American Studies.

Then, they actually yanked books out of the classroom that were on the Mexican American Studies reading list.

Then they fired the head of Mexican American Studies, Sean Arce. He told Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now that “this was an act of retaliation” because he had denounced Arizona’s law against ethnic studies as “unconstitutional” and “discriminatory.”

And now the people who run the Tucson Unified Scool District have prevented Ana Castillo from coming to talk to the students in the schools. Castillo, the author of “Loverboys” and “So Far from God,” is an American Book Award winner. She volunteered to come to Tucson at her own expense to “try to bring healing” on this issue, as Jeff Biggers reported on Huffington Post.

But the Tucson Unified School District said no.

Fortunately, the Latino literary community in Tucson and others who value free speech and academic freedom have rallied to bring Ana Castillo to town anyway, Biggers noted.

On May 4, she’s going to meet privately with students and then give a public reading.

And on May 5, she’ll be appearing at another public event.

“They can take my books out of the schools and they can keep me out of the schools,” Castillo told The Progressive. “But as a law-abiding citizen, they cannot keep me out of Tucson.”

If you liked this story by Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive magazine, check out his story “Stop Obama’s Drone War in Pakistan."

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